


Before the Whims of Fate

by WolfPrincessSarah



Series: AI Verse - Canon Characters [1]
Category: Original Work, RWBY
Genre: Abyssal Infinitum Universe, Aggressively French Ruby Rose, Atlas fucking falls out of the sky in the first chapter take that ayn rand, Bilingual Character(s), Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark God might be a bad guy??? who knows, Death, Expanded Universe, F/F, Faunus Racism, Faunus Ruby Rose (RWBY), Gen, In which Oz fucks up and gets a second shot, Lie Ren is as blind as he is in canon, Love Triangles, Mild Checkmating-White Rose Love Triangle, Mostly Canon Compliant, Original Character Death(s), Poor Oscar honestly, Time Travel, Trans Weiss Schnee, Useless Lesbian Weiss Schnee, Weiss Schnee Needs a Hug, Weiss is basically a dumb American in this fic and i'm really sorry, Worldbuilding, dw named main characters are safe from the last two tags, partial AU, possibly insane author, shipping through the language barrier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfPrincessSarah/pseuds/WolfPrincessSarah
Summary: "What you took for granted as the truth was neverexactlywhat it seemed."Ozma failed and was given a second chance with all his knowledge intact, but the world changed around him, rendering some of that knowledge useless.Ruby is a Wolf Faunus. Weiss has something extra too. Blake is a guilt-racked survivor. Yang, she's as fiery as ever, and has some serious abs. This is the story of a somewhat different Team RWBY, set in a universe altered—sometimes in small ways, sometimes in larger ways—by the machinations of the Gods of their world.This is a retelling of canon events from the perspective of my AU, the Abyssal Infinitum 'verse, with slow-burning canon ships like Bumblebee and Renora, but focusing primarily on White Rose. Unlike similar re-imaginings likeScars, this story will be bleak-ishbut not grimdark, and stickprettyrigidly to on-screen events as they happened; telling stories that mostly happenbetweenwhat's depicted on-screen.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Lie Ren/Nora Valkyrie, Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee
Series: AI Verse - Canon Characters [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964971
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	1. From Broken Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Other stories that happen during the same time period this story is set in: 
> 
> Sarah's story: [_While We Fall_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22460455/chapters/53668210) (OC Story)  
> Team VILT's story: [_Apocalypse State of Mind_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513388/chapters/51278278) (OC Story)
> 
> [Click here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513859/chapters/51279571) for an in-universe encyclopedia with various informational entries related to the overall universe, but beware of spoilers for these stories.
> 
> For all stories and bonus content in this shared universe, please see [this tag](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Abyssal%20Infinitum%20Universe).

_I warned you, Ozma, that there would be no victory in strength._

_And today nothing came to face me._

_No great force of light..._

_Know that division sown by mankind's own hands did the dark work for me..._

_Your hubris is your undoing._

* * *

**Mantle, February 18th, Y206.12.  
Two and a half years after the Fall of Beacon.  
**Why did the Gods really destroy humanity?

Why did they leave so few alive to tell the tale? 

Ozma had spent most of his long lives pondering the answer to those questions. Turning it over and over in his mind, and now he believed he had the answer to both, and it was the same one. Such that everyone would learn the folly of placing all their trust and hope into him. Immortal and yet flawed.

One man, and not even a very good one. He realized that, now more than ever.

Oscar Pine walked, his gait harrowed and slow, down a broken war-torn street in Mantle. Which one, it didn't matter. No one was safe now. Laser blasts and explosions ripped through the night, the last desperate resistances of the battered defenders taking place in the sky above him and the city around him. His clothing was torn and scorched, ripped to a remnant of its former self. People were running and screaming all around him, and children crying. 

He stood there in the street, staring through signs and concrete, breathing shallowly and remembering how his allies _—_ friends _—_ had fallen.

◁⚙▷

_The Tin Man, Ironwood, fell to the ground onto his back as his breathing rattled, growing more harrowed in his final moments. His steel grip relinquished the Hard Light saber in his hand, and it rolled away into the dust and rubble._

_Oscar rushed to his side, staring slack-jawed at his severe wounds. Blood, so much blood soiled the soldier's formerly white greatcoat._

_"I'm— I'm sorry, Oz. I was wrong."_

_"James! Stay with me, stay—"_

◁🎕▷

_The fiercest and most noble of all Ozma's child warriors, Ruby Rose fired her weapon defiantly at an approaching pack of Sabyrs._

Crescent Rose _swiftly jutted out as she deployed it into its scythe form. She leapt and swung the blade around, and its lower blade found purchase on the neck of a Sabyr._

_Ruby fired upwards, ripping the beast's head off, a practiced motion she'd done a hundred times before._

_But the battle had been long and hard, from fighting the Ace-Ops, to defending Mantle's citizens. This time, she made a mistake._

_Another Sabyr lunged after Ruby, grabbing her leg and swinging her down to the ground. Red flares shot into her vision as she screamed, the enervating agony of her Aura breaking briefly paralyzing her._

_One of the fanged cats pounced, clawing at her defenseless chest. Ruby frantically tried to bring her weapon back, struggle away from the Grimm's grasp, but found nothing to find purchase on. Their prey now battered and trapped, a dozen more Sabyrs piled onto the poor girl._

_Her screams eventually stopped a few minutes later._

_She was the first, but not the last of Team RWBY to fall._

◁❄▷

_"No!"_

_Weiss yelled out, storming into the battlefield as she saw her partner get surrounded by a pack of Sabyrs._

_This wasn't supposed to be how it was going to end._

_Weiss brought her_ Myrtenaster _to bear, twirling the cylinder until it landed on a purple slot, then cast black Glyphs behind her, launching herself into the air._

_She slashed out with her rapier, taking one Sabyr out with a graceful arc, then another, then another._

_Again and again Weiss spun and spiraled and slashed, an icy, vengeful fury fueling every strike. Her dress, torn by the battle already fought, spun and twisted with every movement, but eventually she stopped moving._

_When Weiss had finally cleared every Sabyr from her path, she saw Ruby's body—what was left of it. Pieces, so many pieces. Her partner's blood soaked the ends of her skirt as she fell to the ground, sobbing._

_Her jaw trembled as she closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. She fell to her knees, and ignored the growling drawing closer._

_The Heiress opened her eyes and looked up at Atlas, her home, and could only watch helplessly as it started to fall out of the sky._

◁☽☾▷  
◁☼▷

_Blake and Yang lasted the longest. Fighting side-by-side, until the bitter end. But when Salem deployed her most nightmarish monsters to the battlefield, they stood no chance without Ruby's Silver Eyes by their side._

_Yang threw her cybernetic arm backwards, firing out to launch herself into the air, only to catch the blade of her partner's_ Gambol Shroud _and fling Blake into the belly of an Apathy, where she swiftly slashed upwards, trying to kill it as if her life depended on it, which of course, it did._

_When you face an Apathy, you have only one shot to kill it, or you're dead by the time you make your second._

_Yang launched herself again, flying forward, and then felt—_

_Nothing._

_The same feeling of coldness she felt on that damnable farm, she felt all over again. This time, concentrated and potent, as if an Apathy being starved meant something. Depression pulsed into her heart and mind over and over again, and she tumbled, swaying in the cold Mantlean wind as her predator drew closer._

_Blake turned around, seeing an Apathy closing in on her partner, who was slowly starting to collapse in sheer despondency._

_"Y— Yang!"_

_"Blake, I'm— I'm s— Sorry."_

_Another Apathy's harrowing psychic scream erupted from behind Blake herself, and she too started to feel nothing. They both collapsed onto the asphalt, eyes locked on each other, knowing that this was the end._

_Snarling erupted from around them, as a pack of Beowolves closed in, eager to slaughter the depressed, broken Huntresses their allies had ensnared._

_Yang smiled in her last moments._

◁⚙▷

All his guardians had fallen. Nothing had worked. Now, as Atlas was tumbling slowly towards him and everyone that was left down in Mantle, he knew exactly where he had gone wrong. If he could do it over again, he would get it right.

Maybe.

He was just one man, not even a particularly good one. His guardians weren't enough. It wasn't about strength, it was about raw numbers. The calculus of war, logistics and foundation.

He thought back to one conversation he'd had with Ironwood in his office at Beacon.

_"Do you honestly believe your children can win a war?"_

They both had a point. But both of them were wrong in some ways.

He needed _everyone_ to even stand a chance, but he couldn't _have_ everyone, and it was all a moot point now anyway. He wasn't prepared enough. It was that simple.

The Staff of Creation. The Crown of Choice. The Sword of Destruction. The Lamp of Knowledge. These Relics, these gifts to Mankind from the Brothers were now almost all in the possession of _her_. 

Salem stopped on her way to Atlas, extracted the Crown from the wreckage of Beacon, bringing all of her untapped magic to bear to dig the Vault up. She used Cinder Fall to open it, and then took it with her to Atlas. She wore it on her head, mocking Ozma with how close she was to victory.

Neo Politan stole the Lamp from Oscar, and Cinder delivered it to the ivory witch on the back of that same massive whale that had swallowed an airship whole. Both were then promptly executed, having outlived their purpose. Nobody knew where the Fall Maiden's powers went, then. But it didn't matter.

And now, Salem had ripped the Staff of Creation from its Vault, threatening the life of Ruby Rose and Doctor Polendina to force the nascent Winter Maiden to open it.

Then Penny and Doctor Polendina were both slaughtered by the witch anyway.

All she needed to do then was to go to Vacuo, beat down the already battered defenders, and bring the four Relics together, force the Summer Maiden to open the vault. The Gods would judge humanity unworthy, and the story would end.

"We're too late," Oscar grimly asserted. "She's won."

_I'm so sorry, Oscar—I failed everyone. There was so much I didn't see._

"I know. There won't be any more chances, we messed up."

The tanned farmboy bowed his head, kneeling to the ground, as if accepting his fate as best he could. He bit his lip, and his jaw quivered. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he knew that the next life would be even harder because of this defeat.

 _Their_ defeat.

Oscar stared up, hearing the rushing of air as Atlas fell closer and closer to the ground. He choked on his next words, his breathing hollow and broken.

"Oz, will it hurt?" 

_It always does_ , came the stoic reply. _But this time, at least, it will be brief._

◁⚙▷

Yet, when the rock face met the ground, and the dust blew outwards, shattering what was left of Mantle and breaking even Atlas proper in two, it was not the end that both of them believed it was.

From underneath a hundred million tons of earth and broken steel, emerald ashes flitted out between cracks in stone and warped metal.

It floated outwards, reaching past the broken city swarming in Grimm and the screams of the few left remaining, and then the world froze in silence. Only the gentle droning of the wind of the tundra remained, and the ashes started to coalesce out there in the ivory fields.

They grew tighter and tighter, and a flaring of verdant light resulted in the recreation of Ozma as he was during his 1278th incarnation _—_

Professor Edward Ozpin.

He took a deep breath in the tundra, looking around into the snowdrifts and squinting into the wind. In the distance, he then saw a familiar figure drifting closer. It glowed a deep amaranthine color, and had twisted horns poking out of its head. 

" **Hello, Ozma.** "

"Dark." Ozpin exhaled stiffened his back. "Just when I believed that this day could extract no heavier of a toll."

The Dark God approached Ozma, tilting his head off to the side.

" **I am not here to pass judgement, Ozma. You failed, that much is certain. I'm not about to** **_rub it in_ ** **.** "

A gentler voice came from behind him, and a divine yellow light washed over Ozpin, as the elder brother revealed himself. Just as he'd seen him before, he had those antlers on his head.

" **Nor am I. Actually, we were** **_impressed_ ** **with just how** **_badly_ ** **you failed.** "

The younger brother spoke this time, the God of Darkness.

" **My brother and I were loathe to watch it end like this, so we decided** ** _—_** "

" **To give you another chance.** "

Ozpin blinked, surprised at the olive branch, especially considering the nightmare he had just lived through. 

"I'm _afraid_ I don't understand. You're _—_ "

" **Giving you a chance to try again, with the knowledge you have now, but with some, shall we say, conditions?** "

" **One,** " The God of Light then said. " **We will make** **_changes_ ** **to the story, to ensure you can't exploit** **_all_ ** **of your knowledge. Humanity** ** _—_** **and you** ** _—_** **must still be tested, after all.** "

" **And two** ** _—_** " The Dark God stepped closer, ominously bending over to come to eye height of the much smaller immortal _—_ " **You must still die in the Fall of Beacon as you did before, and Oscar must again become your next incarnation.** "

Unshaken by the God's closeness, Ozma's brown eyes only narrowed as he looked off to the side grimly, scowling.

"And if I fail again?"

" **Then the story ends, for good this time.** "

He turned back to the God and chewed on his lip, almost apprehensively.

" _When_ would I be starting over from?"

The Dark God only cocked his head slightly at Ozma.

" **It is your choice. Anywhere but the beginning.** "

☾⬤☽

 **Somewhere in North America _,_ 2023.**  
In another world on the edge of the abyss, a purple glow flushed outwards in the middle of the air, between a scorched car and a puddle of melted glass. Out of it stepped a pale man in a black suit and tie, the sort of thing one would wear to a formal affair, and yet it looked only a little out of place in a land filled with fire and the dead.

His gaunt face and shallow jowls made him look more like an undertaker than anything else, and his aged, balding complexion only merely _hinted_ at his undying status and eternal memory. 

This was a world rended in twain in nuclear fire and war, a world broken by the sins of humanity. This wasn't Remnant—it wasn't _quite_ the Earth some might think of, either, but a world filled with monsters in human form.

Scorched corpses of all ages and sizes could be found scattered around whole swaths of the planet, and patches of fusion and fission-born conflagration twisted and turned off of things that shouldn't be flammable every few feet. Sheeting and metal I-beams glowed a pale orange, hinting at how recent the devastation here was.

The God of Darkness sighed, beholding this newborn hell on earth. It wasn't even his or his brother's fault.

 _These_ humans did this to themselves.

A yellow glow erupted from above him as a gilded staircase descended from the heavens. Heaven, literal heaven, was real in this realm, as real as the planes he traveled between.

How could the Gods allow such devastation to happen?

Why did they leave so few alive to tell the tale? 

There was The Last Soldier, of course. But then there was Bellona.

Down the stairs walked a living goddess of destruction and bloodshed. A harrowing pale sight, with black hair and, now, even blacker scleras. She once was human—or something akin to it. Now she was a pale shadow of her former self, a destroyer of worlds. She wore gilded, white armor inscribed with celestial runes—Godly protection for a G[▽](https://i.imgur.com/IQbhop2.png)dless woman.

With blunted bangs, and neck-length hair, Bellona herself wielded a blooded blade, a h[▽](https://i.imgur.com/2WsLoCk.png)ly object, perverted to kill its creators. 

The Dark God was far from intimidated by the sight. This ascended mortal was no threat to him, any more than normal humans were a threat to her now. All he did was put his hands on his lapel, gripping them in pale, aged fists.

" **So, it is done, then?** "

Bellona said nothing at first, but paused on the stairs. She heaved the flaming Sword of Michael over her shoulder, and flung it like one would a javelin, and it impaled itself into the molten asphalt, still ablaze with holy fire.

"Beware the woman who would kill a god."

The destroyer kept walking down the stairs as she talked. 

She shook her head. "For she will never know peace. She could not live to be in a world where she was not sovereign of her own soul."

Bellona finally reached the last steps of the stairway to heaven, and sighed as she looked at her works. The Dark God then spoke for her, completing the strange quote.

" **And she would rip her teeth into divine flesh and swallow the universe whole.** "

Bellona offered her newfound 'm[▽](https://i.imgur.com/z0X0gQY.png)ster' a weak smile. "The silver city is in flames and ruins, as this world is. Now, the end I await?"

"In due time," The Dark God said. "First, I have some friends I'd like you to meet."

In that broken world, The Dark God waved his hands and four purple portals opened. Through each one stepped a single person, each of a different ethnicity and hailing from a different realm than the last. Each, a destroyer like Bellona. 

He waved his hands at each one as they entered, introducing them by title and epithet. 

" **First, the Ancient, the strangest of them all.** "

The being or thing that he motioned at wore green robes with glowing eldritch symbols on them, and a wooden mask carved into the twisted visage of one of their horrid gods, a twisting mass of tentacles and horrors no man should look upon.

" **Then, Azrael, the Godhunter.** " 

Out of another portal stepped a woman not dissimilar from Bellona herself. She was caucasian, and wore her brown hair in a ponytail. She had armor almost identical to her god-killing analogue, but blackened and glowing in red runes. Some of them looked celestial in origin, and others looked demonic or fiendish. Unholy armor for a holy woman. She smiled at Bellona, almost wistfully.

"Hail, Bellona."

"Do I _know_ you?"

Azrael crossed her arms. "No, but I know you. The man in front a' us, he described you as a godless bastard. What convictions were your crusade started for? Really, I want to know."

"I had none."

"Nihilism, then?"

"Don't presume to know my reasons—"

The Dark God held out a hand at both of his most recently acquired Destroyers.

" **Enough. Let's maybe get everyone** **_here_ ** **before we start with the petty quarrels, ladies.** "

Bellona crossed her arms, glaring at Azrael. "Very well."

☾⬤☽

Two more stepped out of their own respective portals. Kalpa, whom the Dark God called by the epithet of 'the Pain Eater', and Mara, whom he called 'The Cycle's End'. Both were almost silent, dutiful and cold in their tasks. 

Kalpa, a nondescript mongolian man, wore the traditional robes of a Buddhist monk, a yellow inner robe draped in a crimson one. Yet, it was almost impossible to tell where the yellow began and the red ended, for almost all of it was stained with blood. His body was gaunt and almost starved, with his bones and ribs poking out from his skin, like he was on a fast that never ended.

Mara, for her part, wore robes as well, but exposed patches of her well-tanned skin glowed a verdant, putrid green, with Hindi lettering, perverted and twisted appearing through her clothing. 

" **Then, of course—** " The Dark God gestured to Bellona— " **Bellona, the Godless. To each of you I have given a test of your powers, ingenuity and conviction. Wearing many masks. To Bellona I appeared as a scientist called Antimony. To Azrael, the leader of her faith. Each of you have punished your race for its crimes, whether against you, or your beliefs.** "

He motioned outwards with both of his arms, almost preaching at the force he had assembled. 

" **Each of you hail from a different world, and have wrought nightmares inconcievable on your own people. I am** **_endlessly_ ** **impressed by humanity's capacity for cruelty—** "

Bellona, seemingly apropos of nothing, started to outwardly snarl in anger at the Dark God. He turned to her, sensing her unease with the situation, and attempted to calm her as best he could. 

" **Bellona, do not refuse so quickly, I haven't even explained what I am to ask of you—** "

"Enough!"

Bellona yanked Michael's Sword out of the ground and held it at her side, glaring in simmering anger at the God of Darkness. Her voice was not merely dripping with rage, but held a harrowed tone behind it, hinting at untold grief.

"I have done all that you asked! No more. We had a _deal_."

She spat at the blackened, scorched earth in front of the Dark God, who only lowered his hands to his side and grimaced. 

"I didn't _punish_ humanity. I _mercy-killed_ it."

She waved a hand outwards at the four other Destroyers flippantly.

"I don't know who these other four monsters are, and I don't _care_. Our bargain is fulfilled—let me rest."

Azrael waved a hand into the air dismissively, uncaring for the woman's outburst. 

"Probably for the best. This work isn't for a _weak, godless heathen_ like yourself."

Bellona only snarled at the dark crusader, who just rolled her eyes. The Dark God cocked his head and bit his lip thoughtfully.

" **Perhaps you're right. You, Bellona, I will allow to rest. Bella, however.** "

Bellona's irises widened and her heartrate started to pick up. 

"What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

The Dark God stormed over to Bellona as the suit faded into violet ashes and his body twisted and warped with purple energy. A moment later, a horned, faceless demigod had appeared in his place, almost twice the height of the warrior.

" **You think I couldn't see your mind, Bellona? Your** **_madness_ ** **.** "

He waved his hand over the heads of the other four destroyers.

" **These others are one.** " he gestured back down at Bellona, then picked her up by the neck with but one of his hands, forcing her to drop the sword of Gabriel.

" **You are two, split in twain—a sheep** **_hiding_ ** **pathetically behind a wolf's face.** "

He drew her face close to his as she pounded and squirmed against his grip, trying to claw away desperately like a trapped animal. 

" **You can hide nothing from me. That other half—that** **_better_ ** **half, I will** **_tear_ ** **her from you and send her into a world she will suffer in** **_your_ ** **stead!** "

Embattled snarling turned to simpering and begging as Bellona realized the effects of her actions, and how she had failed. 

"No, no. No, please. She is not capable—"

" **I** **_know_ ** **she is not capable of doing what you did, which is why she created** **_you!_ ** **She will struggle and fight against the inevitable, only to fall at the hands of Salem and these Destroyers, powerless and weak!**

" **She will remember what she did behind your face, as she watches an entire world fall! A fitting end for a coward who hid behind the face of a monster!** "

The Dark God said nothing more, but took his other hand and rammed it swiftly through the gilded armor of the destroyer. She gagged and screamed in unholy agony as her chest felt the massive piercing thrust, and a dark hand curl itself around her tender heart. He withdrew his hand as abruptly as it had entered her, and he had the heart of a human, still-beating. 

He discarded the empty husk of a woman, letting it fall to a pyre and burn up in the world she'd created.

The purple humanoid beheld the heart as it suddenly burst into flames, turning into blackened ashes. Another portal formed by his head, and the ashes flit and drifted almost purposefully into it.

"Five become four," Azrael coldly said. "I hope we didn't _need_ that one."

The Dark God shook his hand out and turned back to the other four destroyers. 

"You won't. She was a, hm, an experiment, shall we say?"

Mara spoke up next. "Well, was it a failure?"

" **We shall see,** " The Dark God uttered wistfully. 

" **For now, I send you to your appointed tasks, at** **_your_ ** **place in the river of time. She is going to just** **_before_ ** **the Fall. You, however, will be arriving some time after her.** "

He bobbed his head, almost sighing, as if he had a mouth.

" **Don't want to make things** **_too_ ** **hard on Ozma, do we?** "

☾◯☽

A dark-haired woman suddenly awoke, and felt nothing but c[▽](https://i.imgur.com/GYnhtJm.png)ldness. She heard the sound of an icy wind howling in her ears, and felt a damp wetness soaking through her purple hoodie. The gusts blew her raven bangs back into the air, and her hands slowly started moving, digging into the snowy surface. 

Sarah rolled onto her side and groaned in agony, as if fighting an ache deep within her. 

She opened her eyes, and slammed then shut again, blinded by the blistering sight of the pale tundra. Eventually, she slowly opened them again and let her eyes adjust. 

"Fucking hell, where am I?"

She laid there in the snow, trying to remember what happened. Eventually, she gave up and drew her legs into her chest, pushing herself upright with an ungloved hand. As soon as her torso could balance itself, she yanked her numb hand away from the snow, stuffing it into the pocket of her jacket.

It didn't take Sarah Bella long to figure out where she was and what she had to do next. She'd retrieved her purse, containing a few items from her old world that she believed had made the trip with her. Ignorant of her true origins, the constructed woman zipped up "her" purse and slung it over her back, standing upright.

"So that's it. I'm in Remnant—a death world that should have been just fiction, and I'm also in one of the worst places _in_ Remnant to be."

She looked out at Atlas, then sighed wistfully. 

"I have a phone with a dead battery, and a wallet with identification and money that isn't valid here. No friends, no family, and no place to stay."

She put one foot in front of the other, and started to walk towards the city, braving the wind.

"But at least I still have my gun."

The constructed woman stormed off into the tundra, braving the cold and wet. It wouldn't be the first or the last time.

The sun sped up across the sky. Night came and went over and over again. Days of life and adventure went by. The constructed woman experienced tragedy and loss, fighting for over a year and a half, but eventually found love, and friendship. The changed story played out in a heartbeat.

Beacon fell. Ozpin died, and became Oscar. The Shadow Precept was invoked. The Battle of Haven occured. Argus, Mantle Ascendant, all of it turning and twisting and happening, the world shifting in the sands of time and yet the Atlesian Tundra remained unchanged through it all, even as the seasons changed.

After the sun and moon had passed over the plains more than five hundred times, the shattered moon finally locked itself high in the middle of the sky. Eighteen months had passed between the moment she stepped into Remnant, and now.

An amaranthine portal burst open on the plains, flaring into existence. The surface rippled and shifted with power, and out of it stepped a purple humanoid with spiral horns, the Dark God, now returned to Remnant again at the end of the story.

In front of him, laying in the snow, was a battered-looking woman, almost identical to the one that had stormed off toward Mantle in a purple hoodie, but bearing the toll that her year and a half of war had taken.

She was covered in soot, and wore a dress shirt that had been ripped into shreds, mere tatters of it clinging to her skin, some of it only held in place by blood. Her left arm was made out of black steel, having lost her original flesh-and-blood limb a year earlier, and her partially exposed chest area bore visible scarring.

Sarah Sable panted as her hazel eyes flickered open, snapping off frost and the weariness of her body. She glanced up at the Dark God, and started to push herself up off the tundra with her mechanical arm, which whirred and strained under her weight.

The Dark God started to walk closer, and the Wayward Watcher was not scuffed or alarmed by his encroaching presence.

"Just couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

Sarah shook her head, as if she were annoyed with the God, rather than scared of him.

The Dark God only tilted his head, angling his hands open as he kept them by his sides. 

" **You assume I would not have allowed you your rest?** "

The portal behind him faded out with a faint shimmer, and the God shook his head.

He then snapped his fingers, and Oscar Pine suddenly appeared next to Sarah, kneeling as he was when she left him.

Ozma narrowed his eyes at the Dark God, immediately recognizing the purple humanoid.

"Hm. After all this time—was that fleet your doing?"

At this, the Dark God only laughed, bobbing his head in a haunting mockery of the way mortals laughed.

" **I'm afraid not.** "

He then gestured to Sarah. " **You have** **_her_ ** **to thank for those. She's another traveler, like Miss Hyacinth.** "

Ozma stiffened, exchanging a glance with the Wayward Watcher. 

"You mean to say Miss Sable here is from another world?"

Sarah put a hand on her hip and sighed. "Sorry, Oz. I wanted to tell you, but there wasn't _really_ enough time."

"Not really an excuse, but I understand the need for secrecy in some matters."

The Infinite Man briefly glared at her, then bit his lip. "Perhaps you had your reasons."

"I thought I did," Sarah said wistfully.

Sarah then looked at the Dark God, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes.

"You said that I'm to blame. I don't know what you mean by that, I've never seen ships like that in my life, and the technology those people have... And then, there was that cyborg—"

The purple humanoid standing before them only scoffed dismissively.

" **Both of you came here from broken worlds, with advance knowledge of what you** **_believed_ ** **to be the future of this one. But there was one problem neither of you could have foreseen.** "

He then stepped off to the side, waving his hands as another portal flared into existence, but this one was transparent, and could be seen through.

" **What you took for granted as the truth was never** **_exactly_ ** **what it seemed.** "

He beckoned the two over to him, waving. 

" **Tell me, Ozma, Sarah Sable** **—** ** _what do you two know of monsters?_ **"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had this cooking for a while. Despite the very bleak bad future intro, this story isn't about to continue that theme, or this extended length. In many ways, this is sort of the "opening scene" to my AU as a whole, and I've kind of written a lot of things out of order. I _needed_ a canon or 'main story' to tell, and this is it. It's half gen-fic, half shipping fic, so there will be a fair amount of divergences, but romance and the relationship between Team RWBY is still the focus. First arc planned are depictions of the events of the trailers, from the perspective of this AU, as well as some events briefly depicted in the Adam character short.
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640362748416540672/commentary-bwf-1-from-broken-worlds)


	2. To Crimson Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning**  
> 
> 
> This chapter contains vivid descriptions of pain, depictions of violence and slight amounts of blood (though the blood immediately fades away anyway.)

_From Broken Worlds to Crimson Hope..._

* * *

**September, Y202.12  
** Yang sighed, sampling the crisp forest air of Patch. She'd visited Vale on the mainland a few times in the past, but nothing really compared to the viridian scents of her home island.

Birds chittered and chirped in every tree, most of them being the sort of broad-leafed deciduous variety that dotted many areas of Remnant, including Vale and even some sections of the Niaci Islands, off the coast of Mistral. 

There were many theories surrounding how exactly such eerily similar species of plants—to the point that they were more or less separated by only a few distinctions, such as sap texture and growth patterns—ended up on these remote islands, but Yang wasn't the _sort_ to really contemplate the finer points of evolutionary theory and botany.

She wasn't a fool, either, it just simply wasn't her field. What she _really_ knew best was how to lay _into_ fools. In particular, her own half-sister, one Ruby Rose. 

"Ready, sis?"

Ruby stood there on the opposite side of the sandy clearing, not more than 5 steps away. They tended to come to this clearing often, finding it an ideal, private place to spar with their weapons or just spend time together in quiet and tranquility.

Today, though, they came here for a more raw, _intimate_ form of sparring.

Ruby tightened her shoulders upwards, almost shrugging, but her eyes shifted to the side and narrowed anxiously. Her fluffy reddish fox ears, poking out of her crimson-and-black tresses flattened against her head as she pouted, scratching a nonexistent itch on the back of her head.

"Yang, I _really_ don't think this is such a good _idea_. I feel naked without my scythe..."

Yang rolled her violet eyes and crossed her bulky arms, baring the tops of her _Ember Celica_ outwards.

"I _told_ you, you need practice with hand-to-hand. Dad and I have practiced with C-Q-C a lot, it's just a nice way to blow off steam, _and_ get some practice in, you know? Never know when it'd come in handy."

Ruby still looked a little apprehensive, biting her lip and swaying her hips awkwardly, her voice almost hitting a childishly begging tone. "Do we _have_ to...?"

" _Yes._ " Yang's eyes narrowed as she dropped her arms to her sides and her voice grew more stern. 

"I'm going to be going to Beacon after this last year, y'know. I'll be so busy, we probably won't get another chance; especially 'cause _next month_ is Penumbra."

Penumbra—Remnant's version of Winter and Spring.

Winter was called _Milieu des Ténèbres_ in _Valois_ , which roughly translated to 'Midst of Darkness' in Modern Atlesian.

Ruby knew that in just a few months, the entire island would turn from verdant, sunny and warm to dead, dry and frozen—covered with a layer of snow so deep, it'd reach the top of her combat boots.

Ruby, being the ball of sunshine she was, hated winter, but at least the Grimm tended to be less active during it. That, at least, was a slight blessing.

"Ugh, _fine_ ," Ruby whined.

Yang rolled her right foot back behind her, and lowered herself, keeping her arms. She reflexively took this stance as easy at it was breathing.

"Alright, so— so, come at me, then. Let's see your form, sis."

Ruby brought her arms up into a less refined guard stance. She nodded her head in determination, then lunged forward, striking wildly with her left arm, letting out a high-pitched _kiai_.

"Yah!"

Yang was ready for this and swiftly parried it with her hand, controlling the errant blow and sweeping it away almost effortlessly.

She brought her other arm upwards in the brief opening and came down again with a bone-shattering strike into Ruby's shoulder. Ruby grunted at the blow, feeling the not-so-gentle soul-tearing agony of enervation but bounced back, ready for more. 

This time she'd try something different—right hook, left hook. Just like her Uncle taught her. Yang countered the first with an elbow sweep, but Ruby managed to connect with the second, landing a firm blow on her sister's exposed, rippled abdomen.

Yang grunted and leapt back when her own Aura took the punch, grimacing against the icy feeling that shot through her entire body. She raised her guard, eager to not let another hit get through. 

Ruby reared back and lined up a swift kick, which Yang again managed to parry, but this time, she'd knocked Ruby off-balance. She stepped in, then gave her sister a potent blow to the core, and Ruby was knocked back onto the ground, sand suddenly dirtying her jet black dress.

When one's uses their soul to take a hit, the force of that hit isn't dissipated; it is instead _redirected_. Souls feel pain too, so how does the mind even begin to interpret that?

In one word, the connection between body and soul is explained— _enervation_.

Enervation felt different for everyone; it registered on different levels than mere physical agony, because the physical mind can't fully comprehend what a soul feels. It translates it as best it can, though.

Her soul had recoiled harshly against the fearsome blow from her sister; and subsequent impact against the sand. Her ivory skin felt like every nerve ending was slightly mistuned and firing off at random, with some sections of it feeling like they were fine, others feeling like they were stuck into a pot of boiling water, and still others feeling like they were being wrapped in an ice pack.

Her neck in particular, ached as if a dozen superheated pins and needles had been suddenly jabbed into it, then wrenched away, leaving invisible, scalded wounds.

This is the first lesson that every future Huntsman, Huntress, or Hunter learns. It's simple, to be sure, but ironically enough, it's also the _hardest_ part to overcome for many of them. Ruby was learning how to deal with it as best she could, but it takes time.

Fighters in Remnant don't just have to learn how to use their Aura. 

They also have to learn to _endure_ it.

Ruby groaned softly from where she laid, gritting her teeth through the harrowing, deep, soul-tearing agony that felt like her entire being was ripping itself apart, as you do.

"Guh— _Owww._ "

◁🎕▷

 **December 28th, Y202.12  
** Fall had ended, and winter had come, as it did. On Patch in particular, the frigid months were notoriously harsh compared to nearby Vale, though of course, it didn't compare to Winter on the Atlesian tundra.

Ruby sung a soft tune to herself as she walked alone in a blisteringly cold, wintry forest, treading a path through the freshly-fallen snow that had seemingly been dumped on Patch overnight. As per usual for the start of Penumbra, Grimm were scarce to be seen, and the hooded girl was privately grateful for that.

Despite traveling by her lonesome at the moment, she never _really_ felt alone in the world. She had her dad, her sister, and she always felt comforted by memories of her mother, Summer. 

_"Rouge de roses, dans mes rêves..."_

As she walked, she sang an old nursery rhyme her mother used to sing to her. A sad, wistful song about flowers, and the changing of the seasons.

_"Que m'amène au lieu de repos..."_

Her breath flared out in front of her with each soft note, sung so quietly as to not draw in any Grimm. She knew of course that the Grimm were more attracted to emotion, and that was why she was singing the tune at all.

What she was doing here today; who she was seeing, it often filled her with grief, and the rhyme itself helped her to stave that feeling off. Memories of hope, of better days.

 _"Dernière rose de la été,"_ she wistfully continued as she approached the edge of a cliff. _"Laissé tout seul pour fleurir..."_

Music has always held power over emotions. The right words, a pounding anthem, or an uplifting melody can fill people with hope, drive off the negativity that Grimm were attracted to.

No matter the world, music is humanity's finest way of lighting the dark—in Remnant, the illumination is just more literal sometimes.

◁🎕▷

Ruby stopped in front of a single lonely gravestone, sequestered far from her home, at the last place anyone saw the person that its name bore.

Her mother left during a cold harsh winter like this, 5 years ago. Nobody had seen her since. At the memorial, the young-silver eyed warrior remembered her Uncle Qrow avoiding her, but she wasn't really sure if that was more out of grief or something else.

Off in the distance, she saw the coast of Vale, tiny and almost impossible to make out fine detail. The tallest feature of the skyline was a tower even further out, a lonely, emerald-glowing thing that stuck out from the skyline like a little lonely tree.

The Beacon CCT tower. 

Ruby reached her arms up and lifted her hood back, exposing her fluffy ears to the bitter cold. Stuffed inside each of them were strange black devices, held on by black straps that itched like hell to the poor faunus. 

Having her dampeners in was just a precaution, just in case a Grimm showed up and she had to defend herself. Given the emotions that were slowly leaking into Ruby at the moment, the possibility was almost a certainty, and she almost knew Grimm would pick up the stench of her melancholy as soon as she turned back around to return home.

The first sounds that entered both sets of ears first were that of the coursing and roiling waters many feet beneath her. She was too wary of falling to lean over the side and look to be certain, but it was _definitely_ there, along with a great many sharp rocks at the bottom.

She slowed hr breathing and sung the last verse of her mom's nursery rhyme.

_"J'espère que je vais suivre, nouvelles fleurs dans ce ... monde..."_

The pale young girl then smiled weakly. She opened her mouth to speak, rolling back and forth on her ankles anxiously. 

"Hey mom," Ruby began. "So, I'm learning _lots_ at Signal. Uncle Qrow's teaching me more about how to use a scythe, and I know that maybe you'd be a big help too if you were around, but your weapons—"

Every once in a while, when her mouth opened wide enough, one could see another hallmark trait of the faunus, in particular, canid varieties—abnormally enlarged, pronounced canines.

Sure, faunus only got one _big_ trait, but oftentimes they picked up secondary traits from their animal origins at the same time. Usually minor things like a funny-looking tongue, or a tuft of fur where it shouldn't be. Abnormally prevalent among most canid and felinid faunus in particular were, well, feral-looking fangs.

"Sorry, I'm rambling. I— I do that a lot. Trying to kick the habit, sound more, uhm, confident, I guess." 

She exhaled and blinked as tears started to fall from the corner of her eyes.

"I'm honestly scared a little—a lot, really. I just, I wanna be like— like you, and make you p— proud—"

She took a sharp, shaky breath in and felt the ice-cold air of the Valen coast enter her nose.

"But it's, it's hard, some days. I miss you. _Yang_ misses you, if you can believe that. I know dad does too."

The girl then came to one knee, and felt the cold wind pick up in front of her. Her tears froze on her face as she kept staring forward, and her crimson cloak billowed out behind her, flicking and twisting in the icy gusts.

Ruby pulled her hood back up around her sensitive ears and held it tight against her skull, gritting her teeth and staying stolid against the climate.

"Love you, mom. See you around."

She gave a wistful sigh, brushed off the snow from her skirt and boots, then got up and set back off from whence she came, leaving the lonely grave behind. Tears rolled down her cheeks again, with her back to the wind.

_"Rouge de roses, dans mes rêves..."_

◁🎕▷

Ruby's bright red cape fluttered behind her as she retraced her steps back, walking alone in a field of pure ivory. The resting trees around her waved softly in the light wind, and she felt her Aura warm herself as she went. The icy chill and occasional stray snowflake still entered her mouth, but that was of far less concern than hypothermia.

Eventually she came to a frozen clearing, near a pond that had long since been frozen over.

Then—the snapping of a branch and flapping of a small bird's wings entered her ears. The size of a raven or a pigeon, from the volume. Around her, she heard multiple slow, guttural growling sounds, each one distinct and yet otherworldly.

Her heart began to race and her arms trembled under her coat. One of the noises approached as she looked at the source from under her hood.

 _Beowolf_.

The closest three lunged out at her first. Ruby took a deep breath.

◁🎕▷

The three wolves collided into each other embarassingly and landed to the ground.

Red roses landed softly onto their snouts as they scrambled and howled, trying to get to their feet. In their primitive minds, they sensed the source of the grief had suddenly changed position, now coming from above them.

Ruby pivoted and twisted in the air, then whipped out her _Crescent Rose_. A single shot, fired off the cuff and instinctively, met its target a fraction of a second later. Blood splattered messily on the snow of the clearing, before swiftly burning away.

The first body in its entirety was carried aloft by the wind, a black smoke steadily drifting easterly. Its pack howled and snarled loudly as the Huntress landed to her feet, a low stance taken as she cycled her rifle's action, swiftly chambering another twenty millimeter round.

The closest one to her lunged out, and she did a short leap, firing the rifle into the skull of this newest predator. She felt the stock of the gun ram itself back into her chest, launching her into the air. Instead of being shot off-course by it or bracing herself against it, though, she rolled into it expertly, launching herself into the air into a precise mantle

Without her Aura, the blow would have cracked at least a few ribs.

Ruby swiftly corrected mid-air, angling her feet towards the next target. She bent forwards in the air, snapping off another shot that blew a gaping hole into the wolf's side. Flesh and bone blew away, the brief display of gore almost shaking making her gag in the middle of her flight. 

Yet this maimed body swiftly too turned to ash, and the girl was left to focus again on finding the next target. She landed to the left of it, rolling into the momentum and coming to her feet. She swiftly blew a hole into the next wolf that was lunging at her. The wolf's blood again blew away, this time an errant splatter hitting her face.

Again, it turned to ash and was carried away almost as quickly as it appeared.

She slipped backwards off her feet, being knocked back by the recoil of her firearm again. Yet again, she precisely corrected and stood up, flicking a switch on her weapon along the way.

The stock folded up and swiftly shot out backwards. Ruby gripped the cold steel of _Crescent Rose_ 's handle as she watched the reaping claws of her baby unfurl on its other end like a snake's fangs readying to strike. 

The closest wolf growled, and ran foward on its paws and legs, almost excited and thrilled that this prey had proven more resilient than others.

She swiftly did a short pirouette, and the blade came down, slashing into the side of the wolf's neck. Blood dripped down to the snow below, and the wolf growled in her face.

Ruby heart raced, having the wolf within her guard range now, but she only smirked, knowing _Crescent Rose_ and Aris would carry her through this trial, as they had done so many times before.

She squeezed the palm trigger of the rifle and swiftly felt the recoil throw her weapon into her. She let the force rip and cleave the wolf in two, and blessedly, the saintly girl looked away while _Crescent Rose_ did what had to be done. The body had faded into dust as soon as she had completed her follow through and regained control over her scythe.

More snarling and barking came from behind her, and the girl narrowed her eyes, twirling the rifle around and ejecting the massive shell of the bullet she'd just fired in the process. She slammed the edge of her gun into the ice, anchoring it and keeping her right hand on its rear end.

Again and again she pulled the trigger, constantly cycling its frigid, heavy action manually with each shot. Shell after shell was ejected, and wolf after wolf fell to her defensive stance. She leapt into the air when the final wolf remaining had reached her, then shot herself backward, at the same time blowing a hole into its skull.

Not wanting to leave the fight yet, the girl rammed her blade into the ground, swiftly slowing her uncontrolled transit. She gracefully mounted the forward section of her weapon. The weight of her body suddenly near the fulcrum of her weapon stabbed the blade's edge further into the ground.

Ruby heard another pack of wolves approaching. She scrambled further up the handle of her weapon, spinning her legs swiftly away from one that lunged towards them. She then came to the end, planting her feet against the secondary blade.

Her eyes narrowed as another wolf approached, and she squeezed the trigger from where she laid, blowing it back as she put distance between herself and the others.

The faunus rolled in the air and rammed her feet into the chest of another, then landed on the snow precisely and spun the scythe, slashing at the legs of another that had dared to engage her. The wolf was knocked back as the blood from its maimed legs splattered the snow in front of her.

She then brought her weapon's edge behind her, raised her leg and squeezed the trigger again, setting the blade swinging around her waist with the force of the gunshot.

 _Crescent Rose_ twisted and spun around her body as she lowered her foot, rolling herself into the momentum. Behind her, another wolf was cleaved in two by the wayward swing, and the moment she regained control over the weapon's momentum, she twirled it hand-over-hand vertically, slashing at the wolf's chest. She must have hit something vital, as its body then swiftly burned away and floated off into the forest.

Another one lunged forwards, and the girl threw out the end of her weapon, digging itself into the wolf's neck with a spray of crimson. She squeezed a secondary trigger hidden into the stock, which sent another depleted shell flying away into the snow.

She didn't see what had happened, but she knew the wolf was dead. Again, blood soaked her clothes, but it burned and drifted away, leaving no trace of the kill.

Her cape whipped to her right and she steeled herself as she heard even more snarling coming from the treeline.

◁🎕▷

The graceful, elegant symphony of transient carnage ended almost ten minutes later. The entire pack, it seemed, had come to test the young Huntress, and she had more than met their challenge.

As body parts faded out of existence and blood was carried away in the wind, the young girl flipped her scythe behind her, resting the edge of the blade into the ground, with her back facing the shattered moon of Remnant, Aris herself.

Ruby then relaxed from the dramatic flourish, flicked a hidden switch on _Crescent Rose_ 's grip and twirled it around, stuffing it unceremoniously it back underneath her cloak. She looked around and behold the surprisingly bloodless scene.

Then she noted all the depleted bullet shells scattered around her. 

_Better pick them up_ , she thought to herself. _Dad'll be mad enough that I used the Gravity ones. Maybe if I bring him back the shells to reload at least..._

After a moment, she sighed wistfully and started trodding a path through the snow, picking up as many empty twenty-millimeter as she could and stuffing them into her waist pack.

Little did the young Huntress-in-training know, a masked woman in a black cloak was watching her from the treeline as the fight between her and the beowolves played out.

Every once in a while, as the fight waxed and waned in and out of the girl's favor, the woman would twitch, wince or grip the blackened bark of the tree she was using for cover, but even as the girl struggled and fought, she held fast, keeping to her hiding spot.

Yet when the young girl reigned victorious and the ashen corpses were carried aloft in the wind, the woman couldn't help but at least crack a proud smirk.

☽???☾

As she retraced the path a much smaller pair of feet had taken to the same cliffside, the mysterious woman calmly breathed in the forest air, taking in the visage of the surrounding area as best she could. She always felt winter had a beauty all its own.

This woman was making a pilgrimage of her own this day, to the site where an old friend was supposedly buried. Finally, she planted her feet in the snow, near the same place the young Huntress-in-training had just departed; a lonely grave by the sea.

Engraved into it were the words:

> **_Été Rose  
> _** **** ** _Mere, Épouse, Chasseur._  
> ** **** ** _02/28/162.12_ ** **—** **_197.12_  
> ** **** ** _Ainsi gentiment je_ ** **_éparpiller_** ** _._ **

She then read the words on the bottom of the tombstone out loud, translating it into Atlesian as she did.

" _Thus kindly I scatter._ "

She chuckled a little whimsically at the reference. Her deep, sultry laughter echoed slightly in the forest around her.

"Who would inhabit this bleak world alone?"

Her smile faded, replaced with a grim scowl.  
  
"I guess it was me, in the end."

She sighed sadly and bowed her head as the wind died down. Her black cloak came to a restful drape, the bottom edge laying flat against the back of her heavy, cuffed leather boots.

"I don't know why I keep coming back here, to you. It just makes it hurt all over again."

The woman almost sounded sad; her tones and hollow breaths hinting at sorrow untold. She sniffled softly in the frigid winter air, feeling the chill enter her lungs.

"But every time I do, it just makes me more certain of what I have to do; why I chose this life over yours."

The pale, hooded woman then lifted her foot and stomped the heel of her boot into the snow. Bright white energy flared outwards, sweeping the frost from every inch, wayward crevice, and blade of dry, brown grass that laid dormant underneath.

"Here's to the 'last rose of summer', then."

Once the woman had done that, she pulled her other foot back and clenched her fists, forcing a huge chunk of soil to shift and turn. Dirt and rock rolled over onto the snow as a rapidly widening hole appeared in front of the gravestone.

She knew there was no coffin under there, for Summer Rose's body was never recovered from her last mission to the Spiral Mountains. Too remote, too dangerous for such a thing.

No, she wasn't here to graverob. Rather, she was here to leave something behind.

The woman lifted her head up ever so slightly, looking out into the ocean between Patch and Vale. In the distance, she saw a Nevermore flapping it wings and slowly flying towards her, alone and packless.

She smiled, happy to see that her ride off the island had finally arrived.

* * *

_"I kid you not, Summer. He turned himself into a pickle, then he called himself 'Pickled Qrow.'"_

_The woman laughed in the frigid air, then sniffled softly in, feeling the chill enter her lungs._

_"Funniest shit I've ever seen."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, now that we've gotten the basics out of the way, here's Ruby's perspective of some events leading up to Yang's Volume 5 Character short, as well as her perspective of, y'know, her own short. I'm stopping at some stations of the canon that not a lot of fics generally hit, and it's actually _surprisingly_ helpful for worldbuilding.  
>    
>  So... At this point I'll also freely admit there's a fair amount of thinly-veiled projection going on with a lot of these stories, but less with Yang and Ruby. I grew up as an only child, so a lot of my writing for what their relationship could be and is is sort of what i wished I had as a kid.  
>    
>  Up next is Weiss's story, including but not limited to events from the White trailer and her Volume 5 trailer.  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640363030625075200/commentary-bwf-2-to-crimson-hope)


	3. In Ivory Clad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning**  
> 
> 
> This chapter contains depictions of transphobia with potentially upsetting slurs, manipulative narcissistic parenting, implied self-harm, blatant emotional abuse, references to transgender dysphoria, as well as thinly veiled cultural euphemisms for suicide.
> 
> This chapter kinda _hurt_ to write. See my commentary afterwards for more details.

_From broken worlds to crimson hope in ivory clad..._

* * *

**Schnee Manor – Ballroom  
** **December, Y194.12  
**Today was a day like any other in December, of year one-hundred-and-ninety-four of the twelfth era. It was also the day of that year's Schnee Dust Company Solstice Ball, an ornately catered and expensive affair hosted by the patriarch of the upper crust family, Jacques. 

The host, an ivory-skinned man wearing a suit only slightly whiter than his skin was, was standing in the middle of the party with a glass of chardonnay in his hand, speaking with some socialites and scientists, some of whom were responsible for the most important inner workings of his company.

The party suddenly quieted down and Jacques' attention was drawn to the stage, when a white-haired older woman in a blue, gleaming dress and a golden choker took to it with microphone in hand and addressed the varied entourage. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you know who I am already because my family's name was on the invite—" The ballroom chuckled a little at Willow's joke— "So I won't bother with introductions. But I do want to introduce my two sons, who have been hard at work preparing a little _ditty_ for you all, and they'd love to play it for you this evening."

She held a hand back at a set of icy blue curtains behind her, then stepped out of the way as the lights in the room lowered.

"May I present—Rime and Whitley! Singing that old solstice song we all know and love— _Neuschnee_."

A young boy dressed precisely by one of his mother's servants in a clean light blue suit, with perfectly combed parted white hair stepped their way onto the stage. The younger took a seat in front of an ivory-paneled grand piano, then laid his tiny fingers on the keys. 

Then the elder stepped out, a boy with a much lighter, white suit and a crimson pocket square. Rime took his place in front of a microphone that had been placed there already, adjusted perfectly for his height.

Back on the floor, a hazel-eyed, dark-haired woman wearing a black, simple dress swallowed the last gulp of her champagne and turned towards Jacques.

"How old are your two boys now, Jacques?"

"Hm?" Jacques turned back to the side. "Oh, Rime is, hm, eight now, I believe. Loves singing in the church's choir. Whitley is six. A proper prodigy, that one— _loves_ playing the piano."

Rime then stretched his hands out and started to sing in a taut, compressed tenor. 

"Neuschnee, sagen sie mir..." _New snow, tell me..._

 _"_ Sagen sie mir we meine liebe ist gan... _" Tell me where my love has gone..._

"Neuschnee, sagen sie mir..."

 _"_ Sagen sie mir we meine liebe ist gan..."

"Hat sie... in die tundir gan?" _Did she... go to the tundra?_

"Oder war... ihr hert zu stein geword?" _Or was... her heart turned to stone?_

Perhaps fitting for the song's somber tone, and in spite of his mother telling him to put on a smile before he walked out on stage, there was no smile on Rime's face that night—only a grim, stoic scowl.

◁❄▷

 **Late March, Y195.12  
**Contrasting the strangely spartan palette of the rest of the manor, Jacques' private study, covered in wood panelling and warmer tones, seemed to be in another world entirely. Weiss stared her father down as he sat at his desk, hands clasped together on his desk, as his thumbs and index fingers formed the shape of an upside-down triangle.

To his left was what looked to be an antique handset telephone, with an optical fiber linked to its base that trailed down into the floor. It was an _actual_ old Mantlean phone, modified and retrofitted with brand new Atlesian technology. Embedded into the surface of its base was a brand-new control panel, with a list of contacts, including one General Ironwood.

Jacques tapped his index fingers onto the desk annoyedly.

"I want to know exactly _why_ you _soiled_ such an _expensive_ suit with whatever reddish _gunk_ this is, Rime."

On Jacques' desk was that same white suit jacket that Weiss had been put into for the Solstice Ball three months prior, but its sleeves and back were soaked through, in horizontal stripes that ran up the back of it, each a dark crimson color.

Weiss frowned and turned her head away from Jacques. As she did so, she grabbed her right arm with her left, then brushed it idly against her left thigh, wincing subtly at the contact.

"I—"

"I _won't_ replace it, and you can't exactly go to your recital without a suit."

Jacques stood up from his desk and leaned over it, staring into Weiss' frigid topaz eyes. "But you _knew_ that, didn't you?"

Weiss felt a tear running down her cheek. Every day had been getting harder and harder after that ball. Harder to look herself in the eyes in the mirror. She pulled at the skin along her jaws every day, praying to the Brothers that it wouldn't get any more square.

Every night she cried herself to sleep, hoping she'd wake up without that _thing_ between her legs she didn't want to even _touch_. Hoping nothing else would go wrong. 

When she was younger, she once thought she'd grow up to be just like her sister.

How silly that was. It was growing more and more obvious she wouldn't.

"I'm jealous."

Jacques walked around his desk; Weiss flinched, but instead of coming closer, her father simply leaned back against the mahogany surface, placing his hands underneath the top lip.

"Alright, I'll _indulge_ you for a moment." Jacques twisted his lips upwards, then sighed outwardly before crossing his arms. " _What_ are you jealous of?"

"My sister."

"Is this about that stupid idea you have about following in her footsteps?"

"No, I—" 

Weiss quickly fell silent as her eyes traced a path down her father's ivory dress slacks, before coming to a rest on his perfectly polished _Armure_ loafers, imported at great cost from Vale. Jacques started tapping one of them, then she looked back upwards.

"Rime—" Weiss winced again— "either _start talking_ or get out of my office."

Weiss curled her lip upwards, then planted her heels and toes flat. 

"I'm jealous of my sister's—" She exhaled and grabbed her own shaking arm, trying to stay calm— "My sister's pretty dresses; and I still don't understand why... why I'm not allowed to wear them too."

Jacques rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"This again... We have _talked_ about this, Rime. It's because you're a little boy. Little boys don't _wear_ dresses."

Weiss trembled, snarled and practically belted out her next remark.

"Well, maybe I don't want to _be_ a little boy anymore!"

At Weiss' sudden outburst, Jacques' eyes widened. His jaw came undone, and all he could do at his errant child was stare.

This lasted for far longer than it needed to; Weiss' heart started to race and her muscles tensed up. She suddenly got the urge to bolt and run, but she stood her ground, staring her father down.

"Rime—" Jacques bowed his head and sighed— "What you're saying is _insane_. You're clearly not thinking straight."

"Besides, what would your _grandfather_ think?"

Weiss' shoulders tucked inwards as she lowered her head shamefully. Jacques uncrossed his arms and then started walking back behind his desk.

Jacques raised an open palm to a portrait of his younger self that was hanging behind it.

"I wasn't born into the family, you know that. When I convinced him to make me the heir to the Company in lieu of your mother, he did it out of _love_ , Rime. Love for what he'd built and for the Schnee name."

Every use of her birth name made Weiss draw more and more inwards. For a moment she almost wanted to give in. It would have been easier on her that way.

"You would have me throw it _all_ away for the whims of a _child._ "

Jacques pulled out his chair and started to sit back down.

"Go to your room, we'll talk about this weird _transsexuell_ thing of yours later."

Weiss then angrily scowled and looked back up at her father.

"No! We'll talk about this _now_! Every time I look in the mirror, I see someone I don't recognize and I'm tired of you— you _pushing me out_ every time I bring it up!"

Jacques only sighed and started tapping his foot annoyedly from under his desk. Weiss' heart rate picked up even further when he did so. Again she turned inwards and looked down, coiling back from her own strength out of fear.

"Dad, I'm s—"

The door to the study clicked and pushed open, and through it walked the matriarch of the household. Clad in a simple blue dress and wearing a white faux-furred jacket, she didn't look withered at all by the passing of time. She greeted Weiss with a warm smile and an open stance.

Her family wasn't always so broken.

"What's all this commotion now?" Willow demurely asked of the two.

Jacques sighed, figuring this was probably about to escalate.

"Willow, hello."

"M—Mom," Weiss stammered, turning around.

Willow's eyes narrowed and her voice took on a stern tone. "Do you two want to tell me what's going on or am I going to have to hear this from Winter after-the-fact, _again_?"

"Mom—" 

"Our _son_ still believes he should be allowed to wear _pretty dresses,_ " Jacques condescendingly interrupted.

"Like some _streetwalking queer._ "

Weiss closed her eyes and softly choked at the venom in her father's last two words, but kept her hands at her side. They didn't stop shaking.

There was a void no longer than a breath in the conversation, a brief moment where all that could be heard was Weiss' quiet whimpering.

" _Verdammt_." Willow cursed openly. "Does Winter know about this?"

"I—I told her first, before... She's a little... uncomfortable, but she was— she was patient and—"

Jacques rolled his eyes and scoffed, crossing his arms.

"Of course his sister was the first person he told. Winter has always had his ear, and guess who has _Winter's_ . I wager that _she_ put this _degenerate_ idea into his head in the first place—"

"And what's so wrong with that, Jacques?!" Willow shouted.

Weiss again flinched at the sudden raising of her mother's voice.

"Because this is _my_ house—"

"But _my_ family!"

" _Our_ family!"

"You _married_ into it! And I'm starting to regret that _more and more_ every day!"

"STOP!" 

Both parents suddenly looked at the poor girl who'd been stuck between them. Painted on each of their faces was the same picture; a tale as old as time, a parent who had just realized they'd gone too far in front of one of their children.

Weiss shivered as a hollow chill started to run up her body.

She let go and started sobbing.

"Don't—

"Please don't, please stop. I'll—

"I won't talk about it anymore, please just stop fighting—" 

She sniffled, then swiftly pushed past her mother, yanking the study door open.

As she ran down the bleak, sparsely-decorated corridor to her room on the other side of the mansion, the sound of a sobbing, wounded girl was all that followed her.

◁❄▷

 **Schnee Manor – Courtyard  
** **August, Y202.12  
**Weiss pushed her way through the great mahogony doors leading to the middle courtyard and felt her heels press down and crack into the patch of ice just beyond the exit to her family's vast and opulent manor.

Her icy blue eyes trailed ahead of her as she strode gracefully past the roughly-hewn hedges of the courtyard, trimmed almost perfectly into a bordered compass pattern.

Atlesian and Mantlean designers sure did love their compass roses.

She felt the bitter cold pushing in—she could even taste it on her breath and feel snowflakes cresting on her hair. Yet; she felt a strange reserve of warmth coming from deep inside of her, pushing the frigid chill back every time it appeared. Snowflakes didn't even have the chance to soak her hair, for the water simple sloughed off of her Aura.

The last time Weiss was here, she remembered falling to the ice wearing heels not dissimilar to the ones she was wearing now. Yet here, now, she maintained practiced poise and didn't even waver in her stride.

Part of her felt maybe she was just getting used to wearing heels, but she had seen her own mother slip and fall onto an icy pond in these heels, one foolish night a winter some years ago. Even her father struggled somewhat in his loafers, rushing out to retrieve a very young Whitley from a frozen-over pond in a garden on the other side of the manor.

So a Huntress' ability to walk in heels on rough terrain wasn't merely a matter of practice; but perhaps something deeper. 

She reached the edge of the courtyard, and felt the blistering mountain air pick up around her; blowing her tied-back hair wistfully back. Before her was a beautiful view of the Atlesian Ivory district; every beautiful, pristine white tower, and to her right was the Amaranthe District, the agricultural and life support area of Atlas.

It was a massive field of verdant greens, only occasionally broken up by a massive exhaust fan or flowing canal of water. She'd never been down there; but she'd always wanted to visit.

Up here, all she had was the wind.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" asked a voice behind her.

She turned her head and saw her older sister, Winter standing there. She wore her own custom uniform, as was her prerogative being an Atlesian Special Operative. 

"I wish I could see it up close," Weiss bitterly mused.

Winter then clacked her heels a little closer, taking a position next to Weiss on the perilous edge.

"The Ivories aren't much to look at; overcrowded and ... overly-cleaned. And Amaranthe smells. I prefer the Academy district, honestly."

After a brief moment of quiet, Winter glanced over at her diminutive sibling.

"How is your Aura growth doing?"

"I tested at an a month ago," Weiss replied.

"Impressive. But you're a _Schnee_ , Weiss. I know you can push it further."

Winter decided to change the subject. "And how is your... Other thing going?"

"My... trans thing?"

Winter simply nodded and blinked her eyes.

"It is going... well. Perfectly. My implant's working fine, there's plenty of—" Weiss glanced down at her small but developing bosom— " _growth_ , and I feel more like myself than I ever have."

"They are pretty tender still, though," Weiss added, a mote of sadness in her voice.

"And has father stopped calling you— well, you know."

"Surprisingly? He has." Weiss nervously grabbed her arm. "Sometimes he calls me my—" 

"My old name, once in a while, when we get into fights. It hurts even more now."

Winter was quiet for a moment. Her eyes turned downward somewhat towards Weiss, trailing a line down the hem of her skirt.

"I'm sorry," she said with an almost sad tone in her voice, "He likely does it _because_ he knows it hurts more."

Weiss could do nothing but look off into the distance bitterly.

"Between that and their separation... Every day I keep fighting back surrender, Winter, but I'm falling more and more apart."

Weiss then turned to her sister and crossed her arms.

"I don't know how much longer I can take it."

Winter cocked an intrigued eyebrow. "So why don't you leave?"

"That's just it." 

Weiss turned her eyes back to the city and looked at Atlas Academy off in the far distance.

"I don't think Atlas Academy is going to be far enough to truly break free."

The self-made heir _ess_ then looked back to her sister.

"I got accepted into Beacon. I start next year."

Winter raised her head and straightened out her back, crossing her palms over one another behind her waist.

" _Did_ you now? Does _father_ know?"

"No. I didn't even tell him I applied."

Winter narrowed her eyes. "You _forged_ his signature?"

"Also... no. Not _technically_. I just told him it was a permission slip for a field trip and he passed it off to his assistant to sign, like he always does."

Winter shifted her heels around, and brought her hands forward, clasping them together. Internally, she was almost chuckling at the idea of their father being so easily tricked in such a way, but her ever-stoic face didn't bely it.

"I'm almost impressed, but you know he won't let you go. You'll have to fight for your dream; perhaps literally."

"I know."

Weiss sighed. "I don't know what I'm going to do, Winter."

"You're going to fight for your dream, perhaps literally."

The certainty in Winter's repeated words somewhat flustered Weiss, and she visibly grew flush in the mountain air.

"I— I don't even know what I'm going to _have_ to fight."

"Well, knowing _father_... He'll probably have you face some impossible challenge as a part of it, something he _expects_ you to fail so he can rescue you in the middle of it, and then forbid you from fulfilling your dreams because you're just so _'helpless'_ without him there to guide you."

Weiss bit her lip and looked over at the Amaranthe district.

"I've always stood up for myself. I had to. Everything my mind wanted conflicted with my heart. Even if I lose everything; I think—"

Weiss trailed off, then looked back at her sister.

"I think it'd be worth it, just to break free of him. Like you did."

Winter stared idly at a massive, impossible-to-miss SDC logo on the side of a building in the middle of the Ivory district, suspiciously placed almost directly in front of the unseen, far side of Atlas Academy, at the same level as the first-year student dorms.

One of the many reasons Winter was glad to have graduated long ago.

"Weiss, I _wish_ I could say that you were right; that I am free of him." 

Winter sighed. "But the truth is, some mornings I still wake up and wonder if I did the right thing.

"I _hear_ his condescension in my mind; every word he used to hurt me, and the things he did to manipulate me.

"Then I look at the General, and sometimes I wonder if I've just replaced one controlling patriarch for another..." Winter trailed off.

Then she abruptly turned to her sister and clacked her right heel on the ground, startling Weiss. Her voice shifted from its former emotional tone to her usual precise, authoritarian one.

"Weiss, freedom isn't something you gain _once_ and then you're fine forever. Freedom is something you have to _fight for_ each and _every_ day."

Weiss finally let go of her arm and looked at Winter's belt.

"How do I start?"

"I'd _start_ with a good therapist," Winter deadpanned.

The older sister then did a precise ninety-degree turn, and started strolling rigidly to the other end of the courtyard.

"But first, let's have a look at you, sister. Stand fast, and do not hesitate; for my summons will _not_ relent. Call my name if it becomes too much."

Weiss' muscles began to tighten as she started to trail behind Winter. "I will _not_ surrender."

"I wonder how long that'll last when a pack of beowolves is upon you."

Winter then reached the front of the courtyard, leapt almost 20 feet into the air and landed precisely on one of the many stone pillars separating the courtyard into three identical areas. 

"Turn around, face the fountain and prepare, Weiss."

Winter then swiftly drew her saber, _Frostfang_.

"When you believe I'm about to start my attack, you may turn back around."

"What, why?!" Weiss said, a little mote of alarm rising in her voice.

"You have to learn to _feel_ your enemy's presence."

"Sense the rise of their emotions, the swelling of their blood, _without_ seeing them."

Weiss pulled out her crown then turned to face the fountain.

She closed her eyes while she lifted her silvery crown up to her ponytail, trying to reach out and see in her mind's eye... She felt her Aura rise and fill her even more.

> _It starts... with the unexpected loss... of something dear..._

Then she felt it. Another presence, behind her. Cold and icy, similar to hers, yet powerful and present.

Then a change. It swelled and surged with power, turning a bright shade of blue.

> _The warmth... that comforted and cradled... just disappears..._

She drew her rapier, spun its cylinder, and turned around.

◁❄▷

 **Schnee Center – Atlas Ivory District  
** **January 19th, Y203  
**The backstage of the Schnee Dust Company's performance hall was silent, as it usually was before a performer walked on stage. For Weiss, the silence was at least somewhat comforting. 

She was here to perform ... an _encore_ , that's what her father called it. Performing a song she had been known for in her youth, to reassure investors and _friends of the family_ that despite her recently-unveiled changes, she was still at heart... a _Schnee_.

It was the first public performance since sequestering herself away all those years ago, as her family had forcibly kept her out of the public eye until she was _perfectly_ presentable as a lady. 

Her father spared no expense over the last few months, propping her up as the family's feminine ideal; at first she embraced it, only happy to have his support... but then it soured as it became quickly clear to her that she had merely traded one form of oppression for another.

She was simply a prop for her father. Something he could hold up as evidence of the Schnee Dust Company's 'progressive' ideals.

Jacques approached her from behind. "Ah, Weiss."

"Father," Weiss said coldly. 

"Still pouting about me not letting you sing that ... _parody_ you wrote?"

"It's not a _parody_." Weiss turned her eyes up at her father and beheld his increasingly narrowing gaze.

Weiss then reached into her right sleeve and pulled out a small rolled up sheet of paper. 

Jacques' scowl only deepened. He yanked it out of Weiss' hand, then twirled it in his fingers, angrily huffing.

"You _snuck it in_?"

"I _did._ Because I felt if I had it with me, it might make singing that old _depressing_ carol instead a little more _palatable!_ "

Weiss threw her arms back as she shouted that last word.

Jacques shook his head. "You do not _tamper_ with _Neuschnee_ , Weiss. Not when you're singing for the _family_."

At this, Jacques stared Weiss dead in the eyes, exhaled, then gripped the tube at both ends.

Weiss' eyes widened. "No—!"

She threw herself at her father, but before she could wrest it from his hands, the modified lyrics were already torn to shreds. A dozen small scraps of prose fell to the ground a moment later, and she dove after them, slowly crying.

Jacques' voice trembled with venom. " _Now._ You're going to go out there, and you're going to sing _Neuschnee_ . The people still have to see that you are at heart, still _committed_ to the family name."

Jacques grabbed Weiss by her crimson collar and lifted her back up. She sniffled and sobbed softly in his grip.

Her father only held her there, pinned in place by her clothes as her heart rate spiked; every moment she spent with him, her heart pounded faster and harder as her vision grew foggy from her tears.

His face was mere inches from hers. She felt his heavy breath run down her neck as she trembled.

"It's bad enough you're— you're like _this_ . But then you went _behind my back_ and applied to a Huntsman Academy on the other side of the _globe_..."

"You're lucky you _beat_ that thing, because—"

Then Weiss' heart calmed. She stopped trembling, clacked her heel onto the floor and stiffened in her father's grasp, staring him in the eye with her own fiery gaze.

"Because _why_ ? Because it was a haywire experiment that _you_ let get out of control?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes condemningly. "Or because it was a threat to the entire _manor_ by that point?"

Jacques snarled and threw Weiss to the side, almost knocking her off-balance, but with a ballerina's grace, she planted her feet and stayed upright.

Her father scowled and started tapping his foot, while crossing his arms. 

Weiss' heart began thundering out of her chest once more, but she clenched her fists and steeled her against her own panic, staring the old man down with icy fire in her eyes.

Jacques then threw his arms up and started to walk away.

"Fine, you petulent boy."

Then, he suddenly turned back around and condescendingly waved his right hand in Weiss' direction.

"Oh, _sorry_. Petulent _girl_."

Weiss only scowled in return as Jacques lowered his hand back to his side and took a threatening tone.

"Keep on doing whatever you _want_ , Weiss. See what it gets you."

Jacques stepped back off into the side hallway—not to join the audience, but instead heading for the rear entrance of the center, where the family's _Type-IV_ was waiting to take him back to the SDC tower.

Weiss exhaled and gracefully strode out onto the stage, to an audience of tens of thousands, who had all come here to see her first performance as herself.

The announcer, who spoke in a light Mantlean accent then heralded her arrival.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome— Weiss... Schnee..."

 _I am_ **_nobody_ ** _'s conversation piece anymore._

When she reached the middle of the stage, the tune of _Neuschnee_ started playing, the intro, a gentle piano...

She inhaled softly then began to sing as she had done so many times before.

" _Mirror, tell me something..."_

_"Tell me who's the loneliest, of all..."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a planning and layout standpoint, this chapter was pretty easy to hammer down. The tone shifts and transitions and such were pretty routine and it all slotted together well. From an emotional standpoint, however, it fought me every step of the way. I started crying just doing the _scene-by-scene breakdown._  
>    
>  There's a reason why my other transgender character, Sarah Sable, is well past her transition. I keep my wish fulfillment over there (though she's about to suffer a lot so it evens out). I didn't really _want_ to write this chapter at all, which was actually a big reason why I kept putting off depicting the canon characters—along with the fact that I felt I wouldn't be able to do them justice.  
>    
>  I _hope_ I proved myself wrong.  
>    
>  Next up is Blake's story, but first there's a little one-shot I have planned that's sort of Halloween-themed. If you're hungry for more furball Ruby, tomboy Yang and some mother-daughters fluff, then keep an eye out for it, it'll be called _Scary Stories_ and before you ask, it's canon for this AU as well.  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640363263860834304/commentary-bwf-3-in-ivory-clad)


	4. Under Blackened Skies

_From broken worlds to crimson hope in ivory clad._

_Under blackened skies..._

* * *

**Forever Fall Forest – Pump Station  
Approximately 1,000 miles from the outskirts of Vale  
** **January 3rd, Y203.12**

 _This mission is the last._ _I will find my own liberation._

The girl the White Fang called 'The Belladonna' had told herself that a few times before.

Yet each time, she couldn't bring herself to do it. She'd tell herself that maybe he'd change. That what she saw was just her own mind lying to herself. 

Adam couldn't, could he? 

She was his, he was hers... But this time he'd gone too far.

Blake stood there solemnly, overlooking the exclusively crimson foliage of the Forever Fall forest. Her arms were crossed, and her amber hues downfallen.

The snarling of a Beowolf entered her ears, and they sharply craned to the left. But from the volume, she knew the creature was distant. They were safe, atop this rooftop in the middle of the Forever Fall. 

Waiting to catch a train.

"Blake, I'm _sorry_..."

Adam sighed and walked up to her again. Each footstep of his made her body shiver imperceptibly.

"I _told_ you, it was an _accident_..."

" _Was it?_ " Blake pivoted around, looking Adam in the face. "This wasn't the first time humans have died on missions you led."

◁☽☾▷

 **Kuo Kuana – March, Y200.12  
** If only she had run the moment she saw him the first time.

Drums pounded with singing and fireworks through Kuo Kuana's streets, as the allied clans celebrated the Spring Equinox—the moment the long winter ends and the light overcomes the darkness. When the worst of Penumbra was over with.

True, here in Menagerie there was no harsh winters, nor lethal bitter cold... Not like the Atlesian tundra; where it could kill a person in seconds. It was only a slight temperature shift; yet for all their brothers and sisters that lived in harsher climates, this melting pot of faunus culture and clan heritage would sing and dance.

 _Sanhāto_ drummers from the _Hitomari_ rhythmically banged their Sun Drums as they marched down the street alongside _Okiohi_ flutists, playing their Mistrali _Xiaos_ —long wooden flutes constructed from solid pieces of the bamboo native to Kuo Kuana as well as southern Mistral. Hijimi craftsmen and artisans could be seen at every moment hauking their wares in the streets, examples of both incredible artifice and humble trinkets of the festival.

Even the normally dour night shifters were filled with life, happy to have companionship and joy on the normally silent nights.

Chirol and Balius, the most notable of the 'night shift' clans, were so thrilled with nightly celebrations, that many of them worked hard all year to provide the increasingly massive fireworks displays that lit up the oceans off Menagerie's coast. Ocean routes were rescheduled, and even many more aquatically-endowed faunus assisted them with the endeavor. 

The Spring Equinox was a symbol of faunus unity—not just for the ones in Kuo Kuana, but for the faunus spread out, scattered across every corner of the globe.

But the festival, for all its upsides, was also _loud_.

Many eared faunus had to wrap and plug their animal ears to dampen the effects of such deafening noise... clothing them in bandages and stuffing them with gauze or pads—or, more recently, specially molded earplugs.

Yet, this was a place where they did not have to hide.

So, instead of just wrapping their ears and leaving it at that, many of them instead highlighted their presence, decorating the wraps and painting the fronts with fascimilies of the organs that they protected, or sometimes with disturbing eyes or extra mouths, embracing what humans had seen them as for decades; as they danced and sang proudly and openly in the streets.

Faunus do not like to hide who they are when they don't have to, nor shy away from what has been done to them. They are not ashamed; when they cover up their traits, they do so out of necessity... like on particularly noisy nights.

But... tonight, Hitoma Blake herself, daughter of Hitoma Ghira... had _forgotten_. 

Blake stood in the crowd, wearing a green _kimono_. Her amber eyes were locked on her own father, a broad-shouldered bearded man whose sheer scale was only matched by his heart and love for the faunus, standing next to an only _somewhat_ shorter tanned woman from the mainland of Mistral; a Khan—leader of the _Okiohi_. 

The pounding noises filtered deafeningly into her ears as her heart started to race; the sheer cacophony overwhelming her senses.

"Men and women of Kuo Kuana, I stand before you today, Second Leader of the White Fang, to bring you all grave news from the the field, brought to me by our finest representatives—Adam Taurus and Ilia Amitola."

She gestured to two people in the crowd; one brown-skinned chameleon faunus, and a horned man with red hair, wearing an eye-covering mask.

For a moment, the noise filtered out, and she found herself staring at the strange man.

"News I feel awful to have occurred today, on this most hallowed of days..."

Though the woman on stage did not cover her ears, instead exposing their piercings and majesty to the world, small, black nubs could be seen tucked deep inside them. Not even Khan Oki Sienna was immune to the limits of her biology.

Sienna shook her head as the crowd exchanged murmurs and associated worried sentiments.

"Three members of the White Fang were captured by vicious human _mercenaries_ all for trying to help faunus abused and mistreated in the dust mines of Vacuo!"

Shocked gasps came from the crowd.

Blake tugged against the back of her mother's own _kimono_. "Mom, I don't feel so good—"

Her mother turned to look at her. "Blake—?"

"Can I go back home?"

She mewed and whined, almost clawing at her mother's side. "I forgot my plugs, please it's just a few blocks—"

Kali glared at her daughter. "You _forgot_ them?"

Blake nodded, and her mother just sighed. "Alright, just— just be careful, dear."

◁☽☾▷

Blake set off away from the sensory mess, clutching her ears and tucking her arms into her side; but she stopped when she saw that same red-headed man... crying at the side of the alleyway leading to her home.

The felinid girl knelt low to the ground, approaching the weeping man along his left side cautiously. She came to his side and saw—

Scarring along his eye.

"Are you— are you alright?"

He turned and looked at her, but that was when she saw it fully. 

A brand that said 'SDC', bordered in bright red; the mutilated, scorched flesh of a former slave. Under it, a maimed, permanently closed eye. The sight almost made her gag.

The man roared and pounded his fist against the wall, cracking it under his sheer strength.

He turned away from the wall, swiftly throwing his white mask back over the scar. "You— you _saw_."

"Yes, I _did_ — Why do you cover your—"

"It is _my_ business," Adam tersely said. "Some of us may bear our scars with pride, but mine are _only_ shameful."

"I—" Blake started to stammer, marveling agape at the man's conviction.

"What could be so shameful?"

"Defeat," Adam sternly stated.

Blake then looked the man over with her keen eyes, wondering if she'd seen him somewhere before. 

"You're— Hitoma Adam."

Adam placed his fists along his back, stretching it out with a sigh.

"That I am... and you are Hitoma Blake," he mused.

"I am. I was just heading to my family's home—"

"Chief Ghira's _daughter_... left all alone to walk the streets at night."

Blake sent an idle glance up the street, glancing to her family's manor. 

"Our— our house is close," Blake stammered anxiously.

"Still, so late."

Adam looked down as he clasped his hand around the grip of his katana, then pensively looked back at Blake.

"Please, permit me to escort you home, Hitoma Blake. You never know what monsters may lie out on the dark."

"Well..." Blake smirked, then leaned back a little, chewing on her lip as she swayed coquettishly.

"What would you know of monsters, Hitoma Adam?"

Adam chuckled and shook his head. "A great deal, I'm afraid."

At this, he held out his arm to the chief's daughter chivalrously. Blake wrapped her arm into his, and they walked together to her home.

Of course, he was a perfect gentleman. Never once swore in front of her, never crossed a line. Didn't touch anything he shouldn't have.

Maybe that's why she didn't see him for what he was that night. He was hiding it—along with his scars.

◁☽☾▷

 **Somewhere in the Forests of Mistral – Y201.12  
** In the tropical setting of Mistral's forests, a cacophony of noises could be heard. From Rosefinches and Parrotbills cawing and chirping, to the rushing of water. 

Blake's unshod ears absorbed every detail of the forest's environment, flitting and darting around her head. A rabbit chewing on a blade of grass there, a bird carving a nest into a tree over there. Chittering of crickets—though, that was much harder to isolate, as they came from all around her—and to her north, a waterfall. The distinctive sound of the crashing of waters on slippery, mildewy rock and roaring down a cliff face was hard to mistake for anything else.

Faunus made natural hunters; it was said. Not because they were possessed of animalistic instincts; instead, it was due to their unique biology. 

In particular, faunus whose primary traits are a set of ears. Though not exactly more sensitive by themselves, they possessed a parabolic quality that allowed them to zone in on a particular noise instinctively; aiding them in localization and directionality.

Unlike the animals they source their traits from, as well, faunus possess a fully-functioning set of _human_ ears as well. They gain the advantages of both; though at the downside of sometimes having to deal with sensory overload.

Combine this with the natural night vision many possess, and one can see how they would be evolutionarily predisposed for hunting.

By her side was another such talented hunter, Hitoma Adam, the one they called 'The Red Bull'. Disregarding the fact that he was actually a _bison_ faunus, the epithet was apropos.

"You came back," he said as he crushed a branch underfoot. "After your father withdrew his support for all us _radicals_ in the White Fang."

Adam turned towards Blake as they approached a waterfall.

"I must ask, Blake... Why?"

Blake said nothing at first, chewing her lip pensively and stepping forward. She leaned over on a rock, craning her ears towards the waters and taking the noise in. Adam stood there, eyeing her as she leaned sultrily in thought.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she spoke again, looking up into the waterfall.

"I could ask the same of you."

She turned around, then leaned against the rock with her back to it.

"You _could_ get out—turn yourself in, ask to be pardoned for what you've done with the Fang."

Blake crossed her arms, then looked down at her shoes. "You'd have a new life."

Adam sighed, looking to the dirt as he stepped closer. "You _know_ why I can't."

"I do." Blake sighed. "And it's my reason too."

"I want a _better world_ for the faunus. My family, with their boilers feeding half of Kuo Kuana and the manor—"

Adam took a seat next to a rock, listening to Blake as she kept musing.

"They're secure, but so many others..."

She trailed off.

"So... you're not afraid of the consequences, then?"

Blake's eyes narrowed at Adam. "I am _not_."

Adam put his hands together. "Or of me?"

"Oh, Adam," she purred.

Blake turned around and put a hand on her hips, stepping forward and coquettishly placing her hand on her cheek.

" _Nothing_ you could do would _frighten_ me."

Adam chuckled whimsically, then pushed his way to his feet. 

"Well then, 'Belladonna'... You ready to get started?"

Blake looked upwards at the waterfall, knowing the facility that lay at the top of the mountain.

"SDC facility, minimal security..." 

Blake chuckled almost whimsically. "It'll be like breaking into a zoo."

◁☽☾▷

 **Forever Fall Forest—Pump Station  
** Blake pulled away and crossed her arms as her ears fell flat against her head. "How many more accidents are there going to _be_?"

"I don't know!"

Adam waved his arm out to his side, as if he were holding up his own disembodied balls. As you do, when you're a self-absorbed egomaniac.

Blake felt that shivering again and looked down, away from her boyfriend.

"I'm out there _fighting_ for us and when you fight—"

Adam clenched his fist and brought it down to his side. She openly flinched, though Adam didn't notice. 

"—people get _hurt_. What, do you want me to just abandon our cause... like your _parents_?"

Blake's eyes suddenly widened and hear feline ears shot upright, as she backed away from Adam. 

"No!" Her ears fell to the sides slightly, as her amber eyes narrowed. "I'm not saying that, I—"

Again, the wolf's snarling. Closer, this time. Her ears perked towards its source and her heart raced slightly, but then she remembered that she wasn't here alone. Her heartbeat started to calm

She shook her head and flattened her ears sadly. "I don't know."

Adam sighed and looked to his left, then turned back to Blake. "I'm sorry."

Her ears perked back up again, and she looked at Adam once more. A faint glimmer of hope lit up her eyes again.

"I shouldn't have brought them up."

He held his hand to his chest, in feigned resignation. "I just get scared when it feels like you don't believe in me anymore."

Blake put her arms down and stepped closer, then laid a reassuring hand on Adam's shoulder. He glanced at it, then tried to reach for her other hand to hold it.

A moment of hesitation later, she'd accepted the touch. 

Blake shook her head. "I never said that."

"Thank you, Blake." Adam smiled as he interleaved his fingers with hers.

"It's good to know I've still got you."

◁☽☾▷

 **Forever Fall Forest  
** **Approximately 950 miles from the outskirts of Vale  
** It came down from the ceiling, from the darkness above them. For all the intel Blake and Adam possessed, nothing said anything about the final guardian of the train car—a Centurion.

Model one-fourty—black, red and menacing. Four massive legs, supporting a humanoid torso and a scanning system that could identify targets from miles away. 

No civilian model was this one, either. It had four heavy plasma cannons on its arms, incredibly unlike the blasters used by the Atlesian military, and another six strapped to its shoulders.

Designed to _slaughter_ Grimm like Beowolves _en masse_. Programmed with a hunter's instinct, capable of clinging to ceilings and walls with leg-built gravity generators. Its AI was even possessed of a particular sadism and ruthlessness absent from most other Atlesian robots.

Machines don't have Auras. So the two Fangs never saw it coming.

Blake and Adam flew through the wall, blasted by white-hot searing plasma that not even the toughest of Huntsman steels could withstand. Their Auras both fractured, split in twain as the agony entered their minds.

It should have killed them. Were it not for their soul's strength, it would have.

They landed 20 feet back. Adam had landed on his chest and skidded backwards from the impact, while Blake—being a feline faunus—gracefully landed... on her head.

The machine whirred and clanked out from the warped, still red-hot bits of steel, aiming to kill these reckless intruders. Each step forward was an implacable insectoid gait. 

Adam pulled up and looked towards his girlfriend. 

"Buy me some time!"

Her amber eyes narrowed in a mixture of uncertainty and fear. 

"Are you _sure?!_ "

" _Do it!_ " came the stressed reply.

The cat faunus leapt forward into the fray, despite knowing the sheer power the war machine possessed. Adam gripped the hilt of his sword and focused his mind, bringing up his Semblance.

The Centurion fired a repeating barrage of shots from its upper cannons. The first slow-moving balls of plasma was effortlessly dodged by Blake, but she felt the searing heat on the sides of her Aura with the swift dash. 

In the metallic surface of the cargo carriage, molten holes of steel appeared with each impact, exposing purple glowing circuitry underneath. Blake privately thanked the gods that Dust containers were usually more reinforced these days, else the superheated balls of plasma might just have set them off already.

The second blast, she wasn't fast enough to dodge herself, but she reflexively brought her Semblance to bear, leaving behind a shadow clone and swiftly finding herself to the right of where she was, again feeling only a weak heat to her left.

These machines could incinerate Grimm easily, but a full-powered Huntsman with a Semblance like hers was almost impossible to target.

How do you hit something that can move out of the way in the blink of an eye?

Blake moved faster than any human or cat, catapulting herself forward with the strength of her Aura and slashing at the machine's side, leaving only the barest scratch on its surface.

But the strike wasn't meant to deal damage anyway. Her _Gambol Shroud_ 's _kusarigama_ blade had found purchase in the Centurion's side, arresting her incredible momentum. She felt her arm resist against the rapid deceleration, but, thanks to her Aura, her joint stayed attached.

Then she sent her Aura surging into her weapon.

A single bullet fired, launching the blade across the machine's side as she simultaneously pulled on the reinforced ribbon with all of her strength, yanking the blade upwards.

This time, the reinforced chassis gave, and the machine now bore an impressive gash along its side. 

She flicked her wrist in, catching the hilt of her blade and switching it into its _katana_ form. With the bladed sheath in her other hand, she dashed forward, slashing at the machine's legs and denting the steel. 

The machine's servos roared, trying to stamp this small attacker into the dirt, but Blake dodged every wayward swipe and blast, falling forward between the machine's legs.

Its arm turned as it tried to hit her with a plasma blast, but she only slipped away, leaving a piece of her Aura behind to take the blast.

Then, she appeared in front of it's scanner directly, slashing at its armored face, before bending away from it, another shadow clone taking the expected plasma blast from its upper cannons.

She flipped down and landed on her feet, then put all of her leg strength into launching herself upwards, ramming her blade into the machine's jaw.

She pulled the trigger almost a dozen times, emptying her magazine into its chest, before leaping away, yanking the machine's head and skull wide open.

Its scanner systems frenzied, the machine then deployed its primary cannon, preparing a powerful charged-up blast of plasma that would be sure to melt both the Hunters standing before it.

"Move!" Blake dashed forwards along the train, hoping her boyfriend wouldn't follow. She was proven right a moment later when she didn't feel the searing heat from the machine's plasma cannons.

A moment later, she'd reached the cabin, and saw the engineer and the driver through a window from behind. The engineer, a brown-skinned Valen with dark hair, turned to look at her, and swiftly grimaced, drawing the shades.

Blake's eyes lowered sadly as she turned back, walking back along the train from the tender. She stopped and hopped down, balancing herself effortlessly on the narrow linkage that connected this car to the rest of the train.

She looked her lover in the mask. Behind it, his sole remaining eye widened as he realized the mistake he'd made—that he didn't _really_ have her anymore.

_No..._

_You don't get to hurt any more people... and you don't get to control me anymore._

_Walk in the light... Hitoma Adam._

"Goodbye."

Right before he reached her, she slashed down, striking at the tiny pin holding the engine connected to the rest of the train. Tiny fragments flew to the sides as the rest of the train—all fourty or so cars—started falling away.

Blake hopped back onto the foremost cargo platform, then watched as she kept going... and he was left behind.

* * *

 _Adam scowled and turned from_ his _Blake as the train's engine pulled away. He could have pursued her, but chose not to. Perhaps out of respect; or perhaps because he knew she was already lost to him._

_Yet he stood only a moment in disbelief, then turned around, aiming to at least call Sienna and tell her the mission was successful._

_Yet, when he turned to the carriage behind him that had spawned the Centurion, and looked atop the train, there stood a lone man—a human. From his combat boots to his pure white, slicked-back hair, it was clear to the faunus that this man was a member of the Atlesian military._

_Strapped around his waist was_ not _what someone of the Atlesian military would wear—a black leather belt, with a buckle in the shape of a skull. Decorating the edges of his jaw was a precisely shaved line of facial hair, which came to meet a chiseled, pointed goatee around his mouth._

_A pure white longcoat flapped away from Adam in the wind and he could see that the man's dress uniform underneath was navy blue._

_"Gehorsam. Macht. Wissen. Bruderschaft."_

_The man lifted his head up slightly as he looked down at Adam, who only scowled at the condescension._

_"Do you know what those words mean, dog?"_

_"And just who the hell are_ **_you_** _, now?" Adam snarled, flicking the remnants of oil off of his blade._

_The man just chuckled in response._

_"I am many things, but today I am a man much like yourself, dog..."_

_The Atlesian then gripped the two hilts that were poking over his shoulders as his tone took on a much more gravitas-laden timbre; the former jocular silk giving way to a sinister velvet._

**_"A man who chooses to believe in a better world._ ** _"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of election stress, sleep problems, and general anxiety, this chapter might feel a little bit phoned in, and it kinda is. I _wanted_ to do Blake justice, but it was either... phone it in or... not release on time and risk losing motivation completely.  
>    
>  So... I chose to phone it in a little. I'm sorry for all you Blake lovers out there—the timing was just shit, but I promise I'll try to make it up.  
>    
>  There are also more chapters coming up featuring Sienna Khan, Ilia, and Adam, as well as that mysterious German(?) dude who appeared at the end here. The prologue won't be over with Yang's chapter.  
>    
>  Next week will actually be an update for _[Apocalypse State of Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513388)_ , actually, telling Verdant's story. Next update on this one is planned for the week after.  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640363478769614848/commentary-bwf-4-under-blackened-skies)


	5. Set Ablaze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning**  
> 
> 
> This chapter contains awful puns, uppity tomboys, hardened criminals being terrified of a 17 year old girl, technical child abuse towards the same (but the child kicks their ass immediately so it's fine), and selective gratuitious use/misuse of Chinese and French.

_From broken worlds to crimson hope in ivory clad._

_Under blackened skies, set ablaze..._

* * *

**The Xiao Long-Rose family home, Patch  
** **October, Year 199.12  
** **Four Years After Éte Rose's Death  
** Summer on the island of Patch was rarely experienced indoors by either the blonde preteen firebrand or her younger, wolfish sister.

Rather, the overwhelming majority of every bright and sunny day was spent outside, catching frogs and generally getting into whatever sort of rambunctious shenanigans such girls did.

Though the last couple of years held an increasing amount of _less_ of those shananigans and _more_ outdoor training more often than not, with the older sister returning home with Combat School-gained experience to "educate" her younger sister, usually by repeatedly beating her into the dirt as lovingly as possible. 

Family brawls were commonplace, but today was an uncharacteristically quiet sunday, the weekend before Grimm's Day—Rubi's own birthday. 

Tai set his favorite coffee cup, on which was emblazoned "World's Okayest Dad"—one of a pair that Qrow had bought for himself and his wife as a joke almost a decade prior—on the mahogany table in the middle of the family's living room.

"So," Tai started, "How're things at Signal, anyway? Uncle Qrow not going too hard on you... or too easy, is he?"

The blonde older sister's violet eyes lit up, her happiness flooding out with the memories of her last school semester. 

"It's great! There's _so_ much stuff to learn."

"I _bet._ "

Tai shuffled idly back onto the couch, not wanting to slouch so much around his preteen daughter.

"Qrow tells me curriculum's gotten a little _crazy_ since we went there."

"You guys learn anything about Grimmology?"

"Not much," Tai waved a hand off to the side dismissively. 

"Just where to hit and how to hit, really. For Taijitus, go for back strikes, slashing at the tail. Beowulf, head. Pretty easy. Most Grimm, going for the head works."

"But all of them are weak to fire!" Yang chimed in with enthusiastically.

" _Not_ all of them," Tai chided. "Just most. You _don't_ want to rely on that, because the moment you get pounced by a King Taijutu you don't want to get caught out with _only_ Fire Dust on you." 

Yang rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. Uncle Qrow says that a lot too. Swear, it's like you two—"

Tai chuckled. "Were both on the same team once?"

"Dad, from the stories Uncle's told me, Team Strike kicked _ass_."

" _Language_ , Yang."

Yang then promptly uttered a phrase in Old Atlesian, a snarky response that did not amuse her father one bit.

"Where'd you even learn _Belastunsch_?" He asked, confused. 

"Basic School, years ago. Language electives, I guess. It's a hobby nowadays."

"Feels strange to teach kids a dead language."

"Not really all that dead," Yang remarked, crossing her arms brattily.

Tai scoffed, then changed the subject.

"You're right, though."

Tai stood up, grabbing his "Worlds Okayest Dad" mug, taking a sip as he stepped over to the mantle of the family fireplace where—between two unlit candles and a few other miscellaneous trinkets from better days—there was a picture resting, depicting Team STRQ in their prime. 

Summer Rose, the dorky leader, wearing a hood and looking as cool as the chipper young woman could, in her white cloak and gothic attire beneath. 

Then next to her, Tai Yang, her own brawler of a father. The Branwen Twins, to his left. Yang's own mother Raven, caught in a rare smiling moment, gripping the hilt of her variable sword, _Omen_ , and Qrow himself, hefting _Harbinger_ over his shoulder.

Yang pursed her lips at the photo, and then stood up with her dad. 

"What did mom fight with?"

"Hm?"

"The little scythe under her cloak, is that her weapon?"

Tai reached out for the photo, grabbing its frame with his off-hand and bringing it closer.

"That's not a scythe, Yang."

"Well... What is it?"

"One of a pair."

Tai jabbed a beefy index finger at the blade that could barely be seen within the folds of Summer's pure ivory cloak. 

"She called them _Rose Thorn_. One _Rose_ , the other _Thorn_. I could never keep 'em straight."

Yang tilted her head to the side as her eyes darted between her dad and the picture. 

"Wait, there's—"

"Yep, two of 'em." Tai took a sip of his coffee before continuing. "They were built like a type of blade that was important to her clan, _Hitoma_."

Yang's eyes lit up as she tried to get a closer look at the hidden _Kusarigama_.

"Wow! The faunus have their own weapons too? What's it called?"

Tai put the picture down and scratched the back of his head idly.

"Sorry, hun. She didn't speak _Hijimi_ around me or you girls that often. Don't remember what she called 'em, or how to pronounce it." 

"She was really good with 'em, whipping them out. Blades on chains, flying through the air. As good for killing Grimm as _Harbinger_ 's scythe forms, and on the occasion she was facing people?"

Tai chuckled nostalgically. 

"Well, let's just say that Qrow _and_ Raven stopped wanting to spar with her pretty quickly." 

"Oh, also—"

Tai stepped back over to the picture and pointed at the weapon's grip, which seemed to have what resembled a revolver's cylinder and a trigger action embedded into its side.

"They were guns, too."

"Of course they were," Yang snarked. 

She then turned her violet eyes up to her dad. "What'd you use to fight, dad?"

Tai brought up his fists, assuming a neutral boxer's stance, with his leg braced behind him. "I called my weapons _Xiao Right_ and _Xaio Wrong_."

He punched the air with his right fist and his left fist, accordingly.

Yang snorted and then started to chuckle heartily. "Okay— No, but seriously, dad."

Tai crossed his arms facetiously. "You don't believe me? I'm. _Wounded_."

Then he sighed, knowing he couldn't get one over on his own daughter anymore. Too smart for her own good. 

He walked over to the couch and sat down, depressing the middle cushion once more with his weight.

"Set of gauntlets, similar to yours, but with Dust channels, not guns. Knuckles themselves were where the damage came from. I actually keep 'em stuffed away in the master closet."

"Can I see 'em?!" 

"Maybe later, kid. My style back then, it was based on another faunus clan's favored self-defense art... Some people called the Hijimi. They called it _Masu'Kanzh Maruku_. Lots of throws and kicks, like Mistrali _Taekwondo_ , but I made my own changes, so it's not really like either."

"So..." Yang grinned, her lips stretched wide across her face. "I guess you could say it's _Tai Kwon Do_."

There was a heavy silence between father and daughter for a few seconds, with Tai only able to stare at his kid. 

Then, he just keeled over and planted his face in his hands, sighing loudly.

_Why you had to get the comedy gene and Ruby didn't, I'll never know._

◁☼▷

 **Forest Clearing on the East Coast of Patch  
** **September, Y202.12  
** A torrent of crimson petals darted into the brush, dodging Yang's wide blow almost instinctively. The bush's leaves rustled and shuddered in the rushing wind, but weren't damaged by the sudden thrusting of the mass of a teenage girl through them.

Yang could only chuckle at her wolfish baby sister's mastery of her Semblance. Seemed she grew more and more gifted with it each passing season.

"Nice one, sis."

The blonde brawler put her hands on her neck and relaxed, turning to the side slightly.

"You're not always gonna be able to run away from your problems, though."

She pivoted further, pacing off to the other side of the clearing idly with a somewhat grim look on her face. 

"Sometimes, you just have to stand your ground and fight, no matter what."

Yang briefly sighed, then clapped her gloved hands together. 

"Alright, enough rest! Get back out here," she called flippantly.

She began to pull her left arm into a stretch, taking the brief opportunity to take care of a growing knot in her bicep. 

Then, a deep thump and the sound of heavy, un-ladylike breathing entered her ears. Yang slowly turned around, hearing the sound of branches snapping and snarling in the distance, where Ruby herself had landed.

"Ruby...?"

Yang put her hand over her face, trying to get a clearer look into the edges of the forest; the shrouded underbrush and obscured pockets of foliage.

What she saw within set her heart racing; adrenaline coursing into her alert mind. Her exposed, muscular midriff tensed tight as her diaphragm dragged more and more air into her lungs. She immediately recognized the creature's bloody glare and mask glow pattern from her Grimmology classes.

 _Ursa_.

The beast reared back on its hind legs and roared. It's at this point most civilians, even her baby sister, would more than likely be filled with dread and flee. 

But Yang stood her ground, and in the blink of an eye, her adrenaline-soaked body leapt into action. 

She balled her fists, crossing her wrists over each other, then jerked her arms back. Spring-loaded releases and ridiculously over-engineered deployment mechanisms took over, spurred on by the very physical action of entering a brawler's ready stance.

Clattering and ratcheting reached her ears, and she privately smirked.

 _Ember Celica_ 's twin casings twisted and unfurled, the section holding the shell belt pulling back further onto her arms as the shotgun barrel popped out of its front casing.

A reserve of shotgun shells snapped into position a half-second later, red plastic shell casings with bright brass bases.

These were not ordinary shotgun shells. They were expensive micromissile cartridges, explosive-tipped, but still capable of short-range shredder blasts. She even had a nickname for them already—'Stingers'.

The things were expensive, being almost ten times the price of normal ammunition—she'd only brought them along today to try out later.

But caught off-guard like this in the heat of the moment, you use what you have.

 _Ohh, dad's gonna kill me_.

◁☼▷

 **The Virmillion Bird Dance Club & Bar  
** **Vale – West Industrial District  
** **January 5th, Y203.12  
** "I don't think you really appreciate the position you're putting me in here, Torchwick. If the Syndicate caught wind of—"

Roman chuckled, then sighed whimsically. "The _Syndicate_..." 

The white-suited crook didn't say anything for a moment, only reaching into the pocket of his coat, pulling out an expensive Mistrali stogie, and stuffing it into his mouth in one smooth motion that looked like it was right out of an old black-and-white serial.

Noting that their business was far from concluded, he pulled the unlit cigar out of his mouth, leaning up against the bar as he did so.

"Hei, your stock and trade is secrets, am I right?"

"Information," Junior corrected.

Roman rolled his palms over, almost shrugging. "Is there _really_ a difference in your line of work?"

The red-haired crook sighed. 

"People don't come to you for things they can just get from a library for free."

Junior leaned onto his bar, clasping his hands together as he took stock of the middleman that some strange, sinister brunette had sent to him.

The man looked like a vagabond, of sorts—yet his pristine white coat with a maroon, custom combat lining told him that was more an aesthetic choice than anything else. No, the man was dangerous—almost as dangerous as that woman in the red dress.

"Does this have a _point_ , eyeliner?"

"My _point_ —" Roman elaborated with a smug smirk— "is that the Syndicate may not like what you're doing with _me_ , but what you did with that one little—"

"Yeah, yeah." 

Junior sighed, then gave the nearest bartender a nod, before tapping the bar itself twice. The man nodded back, then stepped back to the wall of liquors lining the back of the bar. 

"You and that _chāngfù_ in the red dress have me by the balls. You don't have to remind me."

The bartender finally returned with a tucked-away bottle of well-aged rum from the coasts of Vacuo. On its label was a scantily-clad red-haired woman in a mock corsair outfit hefting her foot onto a barrel of what was presumably _more_ liquor, as she looked over a nondescript tropical island.

The logo above the woman said, in Celtic-looking font, 'Primrose Reserve, 98 proof.'

"You're a man of ... _simple_ tastes, I see," Roman snarked.

"It's strong and goes down like a man's drink."

As the bartender poured a short glass of the foul-smelling ombre, Junior turned to his business associate.

"Care for some?"

"I prefer to drink things that don't taste like paint thinner," came the ever-condescending reply.

"Suit yourself, _laowai_."

A young girl with a short hime cut and a flowing red, floral dress worked her way out of the crowd, catching Hei's eye. 

"Xūn."

Her lowered eyes and tense walk clued him into the fact that something was wrong.

The girl spoke in a somewhat thicker Mistrali accent than his own. "Uncle, there is a ... customer."

"We're closed, Xūn." Junior turned back to the bar. "Turn them away."

"Not so simple." 

The girl's twin sister, a white-dressed woman with cerulean eyeliner approached from behind Xūn, crossing her arms. Qīngsè, the more steadfast of the pair.

"The girl says a pawn shop owner fingered you. _Yāoqiú_ Branwen."

"Branwen? Why's she asking after her?"

"Don't know. But there is more, Uncle."

The red-dressed Mistrali exchanged a glance with her sister, then spoke in her native tongue, to not arouse the street thug's concern or suspicion.

" _Nǚhái shuō tā shì lièrén._ "

Junior's irises widened. "Are you sure?"

Qīngsè nodded.

The information broker turned around, then slapped his palm against the bar with every syllable of the ensuing string of poetic _Zhong_ vulgarity. 

" _Cāo yáng de jìnǚ de érzi..._ "

The noise and words made the more demure sister, Xūn, flinch in mild alarm.

Hei turned to the bartender, then snapped his fingers. 

"Get the deejay back out here. I want him blasting whatever he's got on shuffle, as loud as he can. Knock the bitch off balance when she comes in, have her think twice about starting anything."

"Of course, sir. I'll get him myself."

Roman cleared his throat.

"Our business was not concluded—"

"We have a deal." Junior faced the ginger vagabond."You'll have your men." 

"Get out, Valen," he snarled.

Roman exchanged a brief glance with the twins, before removing his hat and feigning a bow. 

"Fine. I'll take my leave."

The redheaded crook then put his fedora back on and angrily jabbed two fingers at Hei.

"But they had _better_ be worth what I'm paying for them."

Hei turned around and waved his hand into the air flippantly. " _Trust me,_ they'll be worth every cent."

◁☼▷

The girl had already stepped through the doors into the club. Harried, mixed conversations in _Zhong_ and _Valois_ had suddenly arose among the staff near the bar. 

"If we had more warning, I'd close up shop. Lock _down_." Junior shook his head, speaking in _Zhong_. "A Huntress...?"

Xūn was less than impressed. "Uncle Hei, it is just one girl."

Hei "Junior" Xiong, information broker and mid-level muscle for the _Xuè_ Triad, a man who had once killed a man _over_ a pencil, with the same pencil they were fighting over... seemed _anxious_. 

He stared idly across the bar, into his own reflection in the mirrored backing, his grim expression growing more and more soured by the moment.

" _What_ did you just say?"

The second sister, Qīngsè, recognized from her firmer and more confident-sounding tone, spoke up next. 

"She's just one girl. Younger than us, even. If she tries something, all we have to do is make a show of force, and she'll back down."

Junior sighed, then took the bottle of Primrose Reserve the fleeing bartender had left, pouring himself yet another glass.

Xūn crossed her arms. "She is a nobody, Uncle Xiong. Why are you acting like a startled peacock?"

Hei then promptly shotgunned what was a little too much liquor for that time of day, shook his head at the strong, burning sensation in his gullet, then turned around to face the twins.

"This teenage _nobody_ is a _Huntress_. You said so yourself, Qīngsè."

"Hunters fight Grimm, not humans."

"Grimm can tear a person in half, and Hunters regularly tear _them_ in half," Hei mused.

"Uncle, you have Aura, we all do—"

"Not like them, Qīngsè," Junior interrupted. "Not like them."

A surly expression took ahold of the crime lord's face, as he poured himself yet another drink, leaning against the bar.

"You two are young. You've never fought a Hunter. Their strength is something you know _nothing_ about."

Hei then partoke of the foul-tasting fuel source of a booze, looked at the emptied shot glass sadly, then put it away under the bar.

"I once saw a Huntsman, barely a year out of Shade Academy, crush a man's skull with his bare hands in a fit of rage."

He turned around, then woozily wobbled slightly. Balance was starting to become troublesome, but he subtly willed his Aura forward, counteracting the growing intoxication by setting his metabolism into overdrive subconsciously.

The normal downside of using Aura, turned into an upside. 

Hei laid his hand against his chest, scowling at the twins as he laid his hands against the bar once more.

"You two will do... _nothing_ , because you can _do_ nothing. Your mother would put me in the dirt and then piss on my grave if something happened to either of you."

"We can hold our own, Uncle," Qīngsè boldly claimed.

Hei bowed his head. 

"No. No, you can't."

The Huntress stepped up to the bar, and Hei waved his hand at the two girls, ushering them away.

The white-dressed one, Qīngsè, rolled her eyes, before taking her sister's hand and they both stepped away, leaving Junior to deal with the girl himself.

◁☼▷

A yellow Valen motorcycle skidded to a halt in the night, letting out a high-pitched squeal as the reckless teenage owner of the vehicle arrived at her destination. Yang grinned subtly, then cranked the throttle of _Bee_ , revving the engine up one last time, before kicking the handstand out and leaning the bike over.

She dismounted swiftly and set off in the direction of the pounding music before her, a converted shoe factory nestled into the edge of the industrial district of Vale City, like a nice little criminal cherry on a gritty, polluted sundae.

At least, that was the sort of thing she'd tell herself if this were a CCT serial. In truth, she's mostly just here to squeeze a member of the Triad for information. 

Most people wouldn't consider tangling with the gangs. Even fewer would challenge the Syndicate. But Xiao Long Yang? 

Well, that's just a calm saturday night for her.

◁☼▷

The yellow-haired m[▽](https://i.imgur.com/MGh10R0.png)aiden stepped through the front door of the _Virmillion Bird_. Despite being well after hours, the doors slid right open immediately, and the music blasting over the speakers clued her in to the fact that something wasn't quite right.

Blasting at the highest volume and ringing in her ears was the most cacophonic techno she had ever heard. Remixed from some _Valois_ singer doing a rendition of _Rouge De Roses_ , an old nursery rhyme, and what was presumably a wrench being thrown at a steel beam, the song thundered in her chest and caused a light burning sensation in her ear canal.

Yang blinked, scratching her finger into her left ear, the noise itself seemingly chipping away at her Aura strength as she surveyed the dance floor.

_"Rouge de roses, dans mes rêves..."_

There _were_ patrons... but all of them were wearing suits, with the distinctive crimson of the Triad, a similar color she saw on that pawn shop owner's neckerchief. 

_"Que m'amène au lieu de repos..."_

She sighed and stepped forward, sauntering into the inevitable trap with the confidence and swagger of a lioness in a den of young hyenas.

Each sunglass-suited man, she counted as she pushed her way through the crowd. By the time she'd reached the bar area, the number had reached 23.

" _Eh, eh, eh, ehhposs...."_

 _Brothers, they've_ **_butchered_ ** _it. That's somehow even more painful._

Yang finally reached the bar and laid her hand across it, shooting the bartender a friendly wink.

"Strawberry Sunrise, no ice."

"Oh!" Yang cutely raised her hand up to her broad, muscled shoulder. "And one of those little umbrellas."

The bartender was less than impressed, who just kept to cleaning his glass.

"C'mon man, what's it take to get a little service around here?"

Junior shifted upright, turning to the blonde Huntress.

"Zūnzhòng, nǚhái." _Respect, girl_.

Yang narrowed her violet eyes at the information broker.

"Yīng yǒu de zūnzhòng zhǐshì yíngdé de zūnzhòng." _The respect due is only the respect earned._

Junior sighed, before holding his drink in front of his belt buckle, staring into its half-empty interior annoyed.

"So the Huntress speaks _Zhong_. What do you want, Huntress?"

Yang flippantly leaned against the bar, holding her palm upright. "You knew I was coming, I take it."

"Of course I did. That pawn shop owner you shook down was a Triad _fence_ , but you knew that, I am _more than certain_."

"Nope," Yang stood up, shrugged and closed her eyes. "Just thought he was an old man who knew more than he let on."

" ** _What_ ** _do you_ **_want_** _?_ " Junior demanded again.

Yang sighed, then palmed a Scroll out of her side-pouch.

"Your _fence_ said you know _everything_."

She held up a picture of a woman wearing a Grimm mask, with jet black, flowing hair that rushed behind her as if held aloft by the wind.

"So tell me where she is."

Junior narrowed his eyes, before brushing the Scroll out of his face with his off-hand, which only angered the already capricious force of nature standing in front of him. 

"If you knew who she _really_ was, you would not be asking me so carelessly."

"She's my _mother_."

"I don't _care_ if she's your _pregnant wife_ who's absconded with your newborn, girl. The Branwen Tribe is a loyal signatory. I am not about to sell the woman out to _anyone_ who comes asking."

Junior stepped aside, only for a fingerless-gloved finger to find itself clamped onto the man's wrist almost immediately.

Then, Hei "Junior" Xiong made the biggest mistake of his life up to that point.

He raised his hand and brought it against the side of Xiao Long Yang's face.

When the girl turned back to him, and he saw that her eyes had completely changed shades, from her former serene violet to a newly reinvigorated crimson, the seasoned criminal only had one thing that went through his head in response.

_Tā mā de._

Which, of course, in _Zhong_ , means exactly what one would imagine it to mean.

◁☼▷

Rubi Rose quietly walked along a Valen street at night, curiously sampling the much more polluted air of the city with a strange sense of sadness. Not for anything world-shattering like death or destruction. 

Her favorite bakery had closed for the evening and she'd have to wait until morning to pick up her batch of cookies, but of course... and this was the real tragedy:

They would be cold by then!

Just the worst, possible. _Thing._

She grimly pulled her hood over her head and pouted, walking through a lonely street as a shadow of her former self. Forever doomed to wander the world cookieless...

But then, a crashing sound of glass echoed through the night, and what seemed to be a very well-dressed man with a black beard flew out of it, a crimson Aura breaking on impact with the street just in front of her.

In the window the man had gotten thrown out of, Rubi saw a familiar yellow-haired face.

"Yang?"

Rubi cocked her head to the side confusedly.

"Est-ce vous?!" _Is that you?!_

"Oh, hey sis!"

Ruby put a hand on her hip and yelled up at her sister, waving her arm in the air wildly at her.

"Qu'est-ce que tu fais là toi?!" _What are you doing here?!_

Yang said nothing at first, and simply leapt down from the second story of the club, landing in front of a groaning and slightly wounded Hei, who answered for her.

"You mean... apart from causing a hundred thousand Lien in property damage?" 

Junior groaned as he rolled over to his side before adding, "At least."

Yang sighed, crossing her arms. "Only because you _just_ had to do things the hard way."

Junior chuckled as he pulled himself to his feet. "Damn Huntresses. After all that, still don't give a _fèn_ about what chaos you leave in your wake."

Yang glowered at the wounded crook. "So... you gonna tell me where she is now?"

"After all that work you put in?" Junior groaned, grabbing his back in agony. " _Ohh_ , I _wish_ I could."

Yang threw her hands back and shouted at the crook. "You didn't even know from the beginning?!"

Hei turned to look as the Kǒngquè shí twins sprinted past the entrance to aid their battered uncle, having recovered from their own clashing with the blonde firebrand.

"Girl... Branwen's gone because she _wants_ to be gone. I haven't seen her in almost three years."

Hei then turned back to Yang, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Sorry, Blondie. You trashed my place for no reason."

He shook his head, starting to limp back into the club. 

"No..."

Yang's eyes turned down briefly, but when she looked up, her eyes turned red once more.

Before Rubi could try to stop her, Yang had flipped the man around and grabbed him by the collar, lifting him off his feet subtly.

The man instinctively grasped his assailant's gauntlets and stared her down, matching her anger with a cold grimace.

"Yang—!" 

Yang sighed and simmered down briefly at the sound of her sister's voice, before snarling back at the crook in _Zhong_.

"Nǐ hěn xìngyùn tā jīn wǎn zài zhèlǐ." _You are lucky that she is here_ _tonight_.

She then exhaled and put the man down, who promptly lowered his hands to his sides.

"Let's go home, sis."

Junior reached out towards the blonde Huntress, "Wait—" 

Yang spiraled around angrily. "You _had_ your chance—"

"No, I—" Hei sighed as his shoulders slumped. "You got a freebie, girlie."

"A _what?_ " Yang demanded.

"I have a credibility to maintain. Here's the deal—you keep it to yourself that I didn't know where Branwen was, and you come to me for any other answer, anything. One time, I'll give it to you for free."

Junior then jabbed a thumb behind him at the completely destroyed _Virmillion Bird_.

"And on top of that, I won't press charges for wrecking my club."

"Gee, thanks," Yang snarked.

"I'd be well within my rights to—what you just destroyed back there was an entirely legal entertainment enterprise."

Junior wriggled his fingers as he moved his arms outwards, gesturing at the neighborhood around him.

"See, unlike you Hunters, I am a man of the people, have _roots_ in the community—" On the word _roots_ , he waved a hand outwards, rolling it towards the girls— "instead of being adrift like a leaf on the wind."

He lowered his arms, then raised his eyes towards Yang. 

"I'll give you some free advice. Call it a—" Hei adjusted his tie and stiffened up, waving his palms outwards in a conciliatory fashion— "peace offering."

Yang scowled at the crook, her anger only slightly tempered by the man's deal, then flipped her palms upwards, shrugging her shoulders.  
  
"Hunters aren't the only sharks out there, girlie. You might think the world is your _chum pond_ to do as you please, but it's not."

Junior cracked his neck and sauntered back off into his club, reuniting with the two annoyed-looking twins, as he grimly finished his lecture.

"Not by a long shot."

* * *

_Tai Yang stepped into the kitchen, having had his fill of coffee for that quiet sunday._

_He washed out the "Worlds Okayest Dad" mug, wiped it down with a rag, and then stepped over to the cupboard all the mugs were tucked away in._

_The patriarch of the family had fond memories of his wife with these silly mugs. The two shared many quiet mornings sipping out of them together—Summer, with her favorite hot cocoa, and Tai with his usual stone-black coffee._

_But on one July morning in year one hundred and ninety-seven, Éte's "World's Okayest Mom" mug that was often filled with some variety of heavily sweetened hot cocoa didn't even move an inch from where it was left the previous morning._

_It never moved again._

_Every day after that, Tai always woke up privately hoping that mug would have mysteriously disappeared in the night. Whether he wanted it as a little sign that Summer was still alive, that all this was just a horrible dream, or just because he couldn't bear to look at it anymore, well._

_Regardless of the 'why', every morning he opened the cupboard, a frown crossed his face for the briefest of moments._

_He sighed heavily and placed his own mug right next to Éte's for the ten thousandth time, flipping it upside down._

_His heart ached a little more every day. People around him used to say that it would eventually heal, that the hole that Summer's death left in his heart would get a little easier to deal with._

_It never got easier, for any of them._

_For how could you replace the Last Rose of Summer?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So with this chapter, we pretty much conclude the events of the initial trailers from the AI-verse's perspective, and a little more. That opening scene is more than just puns; there are some details regarding Summer Rose that will be important later.  
>    
>  For the rest of the prologue chapters (of which there are three), I'll be depicting events that have been _drastically_ altered by the powers that be and the new dynamics in this reborn world, which has been somewhat teased at in a few of these chapters already.  
>    
>  You'll eventually find out what that Nevermore was at the end of chapter 2. But first, the story behind that Atlesian soldier that appeared at the end of Blake's chapter... and what happened next.  
>    
>  Again, sorry for the significant delays. Mental health issues, among other things. I'm gonna try not to promise timelines anymore, but I am still committed and really wanting to tell these stories.  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640363690911285248/commentary-bwf-5-set-ablaze)


	6. By the Children of Hate

_From broken worlds to crimson hope in ivory clad._

_Under blackened skies, set ablaze by the children of hate..._

* * *

_"Hunters aren't the only sharks out there, girlie. You might think the world is your chum pond to do as you please, but it's not."_

_"Not by a long shot."_

[=❄=]

 **Schnee Manor – Ballroom  
** **December, Y194.12  
** Perhaps the strangest thing about Schnee Manor is that, unlike the pungent and smoky air of Mantle, or the verdant, grassy smells of the Amaranthe District surrounding the mountain it was crested on, its interior had no particular scent to it at all.

Sure, if one approached one of the multiple well-equipped kitchens, one could smell the heady musk of whatever flavor of the day the lord or lady of the manor desired, whether it be a spicy variety of Valen Stew or a mere well-garnished platter of roasted duck.

The rest of the manor smelled like, well, nothing really. Air conditioned and pristine nothingness. 

It complemented the equally unnervingly pristine carpet and drapes perfectly, at least.

 _Of course, the kitchens've probably smelled more of exotic cheeses an' shrimp all day_ , Pietro reasoned.

Today was a day like any other in December, of year one-hundred-and-ninety-four of the twelfth era. It was also the day of that year's Schnee Dust Company-sponsored Solstice Ball, an ornately catered and expensive affair hosted by the patriarch of the upper crust family, Jacques. 

The host, an ivory-skinned man wearing a suit only slightly whiter than his skin was, was standing nearby with a glass of chardonnay in his hand, speaking with some socialites and scientists, some of whom were responsible for the most important inner workings of his company.

Most of them wore increasingly extravagant suits and dresses, except for two—a slightly tanned, statuesque solder with blue eyes and a broad, massive build, and a lithe raven-haired woman with a wide, matronly haircut that drapped well past her shoulders, ending in a precise braid. 

Atop the soldier's head was swept-back, dark brown hair with only a few spatterings of salty grey dotting his hairline.

He wore a blue-and-white dress uniform, the same sort that the Atlesian Military Huntsmen wore. Clipped along his breast were the few gleaming tokens obtained during his long service, and lining his mouth was a lined, precisely trimmed goatee.

Pinned to each of his jacket's _epaulettes_ were a pair of golden Nevermore pins—poised and ready to strike—that marked him as a Colonel in the Huntsman Corps.

It being a dress uniform meant that the cuffs of his jacket were also adorned with four gilded ribbons, each one plain by comparison with the sheer decadence that girded the rest of the jacket.

The dark-haired Valen woman was standing opposite to Jacques. She wore a conservative and simple black dress that went just past her knees, and her brown eyes lit up when she saw Pietro from across the room.

"Pietro!" 

Her lilted tenor voice had a slight nasal, intoned quality to it, hinting at her Valen heritage. Pietro recognized her as Dr. Ariana Sable, head of the Etheric Sciences department of the Schnee Dust Company.

Pietro adjusted his salmon-colored bow tie then stepped over to the group with a faked smile on his face. He always hated functions like these, but it was nice to see some friends here.

A tanned man who looked to be almost a strange color-inverted mirror of the host of the affair, with a similar mustache and wearing a brown tartan suit turned to the side and flashed a very _diplomatic_ -looking smile.

"Ah, Doctor Polendina. Glad the _other_ finest mind of Atlas could deign to grace us with his rustic presence."

Pietro winsomely and quietly stepped into Jacques' little circle, again keeping that faked smile and receptive stance up.

"James, hello. How's that Paladin project of yours coming along?"

Watts waved his glass of champagne outwards towards Pietro. "You know I can't talk about that, Pietro."

"Yes, yes. Classified means classified, I know."

Pietro deftly snagged a glass of champagne off of a white serving tray belonging to a passing faunus servant, nodding to her.

"Thank you, my girl. Sure you have your work cut out for you this evening."

The servant flashed a rare smile at Pietro before getting shot a condemning glare from Jacques, and swiftly switched back to her trained flat expression before stepping off.

Pietro bit his lip pensively, then turned back away from the servant, starting to nurse the glass.

It tasted horrible, like someone had the instructions for champagne but half of them were in _Zhong_ and all the proportional measurements were in Kingdom Units, but the person in charge interpreted them as Atlas Standard ones.

"I've heard some troubling rumors, though."

"Is that so?" Watts' eyes narrowed. "Well, Ironwood seems to appreciate the project, and my own genius, at least."

"Artificial intelligence is the _future_ of humanity." Pietro shook his head. "Our efforts in the field shouldn't be _wasted_ on military machines."

Watts chuckled snidely.

"Is this about your project getting cut?"

Watts took a sip from his own champagne, then dropped his voice into a low, sarcastic tone. 

" _Surely_ you could find better uses for your evening than petty funding disputes, Dr. Polendina. Besides, and, I didn't tell you this, but it's a _vehicle_ program, _not_ a robotics program."

Dr. Sable then bitterly chided Dr. Watts at a rapid, snide pace in her native _Valois_.

"Certes, vous auriez pu mettre un cerveau dans cette machine de la vôtre?" _Surely, you could have put a mind into that machine of yours?_

"Ou est-ce parce que vous n'avez pas non plus de cerveau?" _Or is that because you don't have a brain either?_

In response, Watts just let out a loud, hollow laugh that made at least a few people present feel a chill run down their spine.

"Ah, that was a good one, Doctor Sable. A good one _indeed_."

Jacques laid a hand on Pietro's shoulder. The tanned engineer glanced to his right, into the Dust magnate's icy blue eyes.

"Calm yourself, Doctors. Let's keep this evening _civil_ , shall we?"

He waved his right arm towards everyone in his current social group.

"We all have the same goals. The future is _far_ from guaranteed— _every_ moment the Grimm are beating down the gates is a moment we _must_ be _single-mindedly_ focused on beating them _back_."

Jacques then tapped his ring finger against his glass, causing a distinct clattering noise between the two hard surfaces. 

"At _any_ cost."

"So is that why Grimmology is running some secret project in the multipurpose wing of _your own manor_ , Jacques?" The Valen woman snarked.

Jacques looked down from Dr. Sable and pensively swirled the half-empty champaigne glass in his hand, exhaling softly. After a moment, he looked back up at her.

"I'm surprised that Etheric Studies is involved so _closely_ in the irrelevant _minutiae_ of the _Grimmology_ department, Doctor Sable."

"It's _your_ company. _I'm_ surprised you don't know that every requisition for live Grimm passes through my office as part of the approval process."

Ariana took another sip of her champagne, then pursed her lips bitterly at it, almost as if she were still unsure as to whether or not she liked the taste.

"What sort of project needs that many damaged Geist masks, anyway?"

"I wouldn't worry your pretty head about it, dear." The CEO chuckled and shook his head. 

"The project they're working on over there is for all of us. It could provide a real, _lasting_ solution to the threat we face, avert _Ragnarök_ forever!"

He then shot a glance at the tanned, mustached scientist in front of him. 

"Though sadly, I wager that would put our dear Doctor Watts out of a job."

Watts chuckled softly, before roundly finishing off his glass. He then leaned in, placing a big, hairy hand on Jacques white suit.

"Jacques, if it were you putting me out of a job, I honestly _wouldn't_ complain."

He then brushed down his suit, and stiffened up. "If you all don't mind, there are some _hors de 'oeuvres_ that are calling my name. Dr. Sable, you Valens do have the most _fascinating_ cuisine, I'll give you _that_."

Ariana simply waved her eyebrow and bobbed her head to the side, not even wanting to indulge Watts with a full shrug. The other scientist then turned about and strode off to the buffet on the other side of the room.

The dour well-decorated military man, who had been quiet this entire time, finally had decided to contribute to the conversation, addressing the CEO to his left.

"Well, if anyone could find a lasting solution to the plague infesting our world, I wager it would be Atlas herself, not any of the lesser kingdoms."

"Despite our true technological supremacy, our duty is _to_ those 'lesser kingdoms', Colonel," Jacques chided. "You'd be wise to remember that."

"Of course," the Colonel replied. "But Jacques, I believe one day they may hold you up as a shining example of the Schnee family name—"

The large Mantlean man stretched his arms outwards a little melodramatically, then dropped them to his sides and sighed.

"A Schnee that puts kingdom and nation before petty money and partisanship."

Pietro sighed. "His _daughter_ can _already_ be praised for that, but _she_ wasn't invited here tonight."

"Doctor, I advise you not to speak of my errant _ex_ -heiress, lest I get the desire to make a scene and have you _removed_ ," Jacques sternly warned.

Jacques then turned to the Colonel and held out his hand.

"It's good to actually _hear_ the voice of our dear S-D-F liaison for once, Jefferson."

The Colonel smirked and chuckled, then took the CEO's hand, shaking it.

"I only speak when I _must_ , Jacques."

Colonel Slater sighed then put his hands behind his back. 

" _Maybe_ some day that might change."

The party suddenly quieted down and Jacques' attention was drawn to the stage, when a white-haired older woman in a blue, gleaming dress and a golden choker took to it with microphone in hand and addressed the varied entourage. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you know who I am already because my family's name was on the invite..."

[=▽=]

 **Forever Fall Forest, Approximately 1,000 miles from the outskirts of Vale  
** **January 3rd, Y203.12  
** " _Gehorsam. Macht. Wissen. Bruderschaft._ "

Colonel Slater lifted his head up slightly as he looked down at Adam, who only scowled at the condescension.

"Do you know what those words mean, dog?"

"And just who the hell are _you_ , now?" Adam snarled, flicking the remnants of oil off of his blade.

The soldier just chuckled in response.

"I am many things, but today I am a man much like yourself, dog—"

Slater then gripped the two hilts that were poking over his shoulders as his tone took on a much more gravitas-laden timbre; the former jocular silk giving way to a sinister velvet.

"A man who chooses to believe in a better world."

At this, he yanked his hands up, drawing the twin swords from where they were sheathed. One of them seemed to be a perfectly normal longsword, with a simple hilt and a steadfast, traditional design. The other blade, in his left hand looked far more modern, with diagonal lines cut into it at even intervals, and a much darker-looking blade.

Adam mirrored the actions, drawing his own blade with a practiced precision and flourishing widely, preparing for a fight.

Adam then paced to his right idly, katana in hand as he glowered at the human above him.

"A-S-D-F, right? From the stripes, I'm guessing, say a Colonel—"

"Indeed I am," came the humble reply.

The Colonel leapt down from his perch, landing on the train carriage below, then twirled the more archaic-looking saber in his hand as he approached, only stopping a few feet short of the faunus.

"If you're one of Ironwood's attack dogs, what are you doing protecting an SDC convoy?"

"Well, I'm not here today as a soldier."

The Atlesian glanced around, then shrugged outward with his twin longswords, gesturing at their surroundings.

"Do you even know who the train you're stealing from _really_ belongs to?"

"If it comes from Michem, it's Atlesian. Military, SDC, all the same— "

"Never said it was military _either_ , dog."

Adam growled, grasping the hilt of his katana. "Call me a dog again and I'll show you what I'm really capable of."

The man only chuckled at the faunus' threat.

"Then let's _see_ you bare those fangs, _dog._ "

[=▽=]

The gnashing of steel lit up the Forever Fall Forest a heartbeat later. The gigantic soldier held the faunus at bay with each strike, the restrained motion of a practiced fencer giving no quarter to the fellow melee master.

Adam slashed upwards, parrying the wayward blow from Slater's _Sparzt_ , only for the cutting edge of its etched twin to collide with his midsection, causing his Aura to spark and sputter with enervating pain.

"Ach!"

The faunus roared, firing off a volley of shots from his rifle, which contacted Slater's Aura immediately. No attempt at defense was even made, and the Atlesian instead narrowed his eyes, grimacing at his own agony.

"Hmph."

"Didn't even try to deflect it, _human_?"

Slater grinned, parting his goatee with the pristine ivories of a man raised on the milk of mother Atlas.

Despite growing up pampered, _this_ was what he lived for—the enervation, the call of blood. This was a man who relished being in harm's way for kingdom and his own idea of order. 

Ironically a strange mirror of Adam himself, who similarly fed his bloodlust in the name of freedom and love. Though now, he wasn't fighting for love anymore.

What was he fighting for?

"We survived—"

Adam was lost in his thoughts a little too long.

The taurus snarled as he felt a swift kick collide with his midsection, sending him back a few feet and knocking the wind out of him. 

"Where no one else would!"

Adam rose to his feet, facing the ranting soldier and snarling bitterly, gritting through the prickling sensation on his abs.

The enemy swung his more modern-looking sword down, and was met only by a swift parry by the faunus. Slater stepped back, getting his balance again and prepared to attack again, but not before spreading his arms wide.

He looked upwards, a brief opening given to his adversary, which of course he took advantage of.

Adam slashed forwards, going straight for the man's gullet, but the strike was blocked by two raised sabers, held before Slater in a cross.

The two men stared at each other from the edges of each other's blades, and the soldier leaned forward, snarling into Adam's face. A string of spittle shot out as Slater spat the next words out at his opponent.

"Where no one else could."

The strappingly massive man then raised his leg, kicking Adam away from him. Adam swiftly corrected, bracing himself and returning to a neutral stance.

"I don't need to hear anything _more_ about your motivations, Atlesian! I know them just fine!"

"Ah, yes! The 'tortured victim' mentality of the faunus! I know _it_ all too well—"

" _Not well enough_!"

The men's coats flapped in the soft wind of the Forever Fall, each one breathing heavily, having fought each other as equals to a standstill for almost twenty minutes. 

The desperation was palpable. Neither had advantage over the other.

The Colonel then dropped his more traditional-looking blade to the ground, which landed with a loud clatter.

A flock of birds fled the limbs of a nearby tree, though why the rest of the fighting or the gunshots hadn't startled them already, only the Gods knew.

Adam glanced at the saber, cocking a confused—or perhaps intrigued—eyebrow at the sudden disarmament.

"Why?" Adam demanded.

"Because—"

The man then whipped his arm out, flicking a lever on the sword as he swung.

"I know your play now."

The kinetic energy swiftly separated segments within the blade, and he whipped his arm around softly, loosening them more.

The errant chained blades clanged against the rolled steel carriage with each swing, and Adam felt pinpricks in his ear as the tiniest slivers of his Aura were swept away, carrying with them the deafening noise.

"Neat trick," Adam snarked, gripping his katana a little tighter.

Slater flashed a sadistic grin. "Wait until you see my next one."

The sword swiftly then came alight with the sparkling and crackling of electricity, cerulean branches arcing across its length. Adam felt the subtle sparking through his Aura, of the lightning jutting through the metal surface the two men stood upon.

The faunus stood resilient, but he felt the enervation creeping up his legs more and more.

The Atlesian's insulated boots, however, protected him completely.

"As Captain Silversod said, two hundred years ago..."

Slater raised his head, grinning like a feral animal, his eyes wide and predatory. His coat flapped further in the wind behind him as the two men stared each other down, on opposite sides of the carriage.

"'The city _must_ survive... No matter the cost.'

"And I will not have _you_ or any other dog jeopardize the fatherland."

[=❄=]

 **SDC Tower – Executive Offices, Floor 309  
** **Ivory District, Atlas  
** **A week later.  
** Behind the blaring lights of a bright Schnee Dust Company 'snowflake' logo, sitting atop one of the highest towers dotting the skyline of Atlas' most prosperous district, sat one man, with a snow white mustache and a suit. 

He held a glass of _Atlas Ice_ -brand vodka in his hand that he was tenderly nursing with the enthusiasm of a choir boy who had just sung for 17 hours straight on the day of the Solstice Gathering.

That is to say, very little enthusiasm at all.

A shipment of Dust had just been raided, but not just any shipment of Dust. If it were _just_ a shipment of Dust, then it would be an internal security matter, and the people sitting before him in an encrypted audio-only transmit, with signals bounced off of routers all over Atlas and Mantle at seemingly random and constantly changing locations, would not have to have been _informed_.

"The Centurion went down faster than anything we've ever seen. They might have been Fang, but they were _exceptional_ at dismantling the security of _your_ train, Jacques."

The side of Jacques' lip curled upwards at the man's voice. The low gravelly accent belonged to a certain prominent citizen of Mantle with far higher standing than he would have achieved on his own. 

_Far higher standing than he **deserved**_ , Jacques reminded himself.

"Then, there's the coming _departure_ of your son—"

"If you have something to say about my _daughter_ ," the Schnee patriarch snarled, "Then I _strongly_ advise you keep it to _yourself_ as it is _far_ from relevant to the matter at hand."

He hated the man they'd spent so long arranging to be put into that position. However, the Councilor was, as with many things they did, a necessary evil.

"It's _degenerate_ , Jacques. The old Mantle—"

"The _old Mantle_? Peter, the _old Mantle_ would have thrown _your grandfather_ and his entire family into the mines because he had schizophrenia, Councilor."

The patriarch trailed his thumb against the rim of his drink, pursing his lips as he calmed himself down from lashing back at the personal, _familial_ attack.

"Then, you and I would not be sitting here nice and warm in our ivory towers, having this _delightful_ _tête-à-tête_ , as the Valens say."

"Don't make this about me, Jacques. Your—"

On the other side of the screen, a woman's icon lit up and she spoke. A terse Mistrali accent coursed through her dulcet tones, audible vividly, even through the CCT link.

"I caution you to choose your next words carefully, _Councilor_. The Director seems to be in a _foul_ mood, and need I remind you who _directly_ funded your campaign?"

Jacques exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

While the debate was going on, a cerulean icon in the shape of an old-fashioned letter flashed in the corner of Jacques' screen, distracting him for a brief moment. He tapped the icon, bringing up a message from a contact that had no name, but he recognized the frequency.

After all, he was the one who had given Slater that Scroll.

* * *

**Found mutt girl.**

**at Grimmtrap Lighthouse.**

**She is beyond our reach now.**

Is she? 

**...**

**Yes**

**she is surrounded by vksb and a small army of Huntsmen**

**what were you expecting.**

* * *

Turning back to the middle of the screen, Jacques had comprehended that there was a lull in the conversation, a moment of silence that could only be caused by a breath of awkwardness as the Councilor reneged on his protest.

"Point _taken_."

There was a staticky, flickering sigh from the Councilor's audio feed, then he swiftly verbally backspaced, his tone turning almost conciliatory.

"Apologies, _sir_ ... Your _daughter_ , would she know anything?"

Jacques set his glass of Vodka down and leaned forward, pressing his fingers against his nose as he contemplated his response to both his errant field agent and the uppity Councilor that was questioning him.

After a moment he sighed, straightened up in his office chair, and then put his hands on the holographic interface as he spoke, replying to both.

"First of all, Councilor... Things _change_ , and so must we with them."

* * *

Withdraw, Colonel. You're needed elsewhere.

**Understood. What about the Fang?**

* * *

"Lest the new, _stronger_ Atlas we thirst for so desperately be taken from us before it even gets _off the ground_ . To protect people's hearts and minds, we must first _win_ them."

* * *

I am sending in somebody else to deal with them.

* * *

"And as for your second inquiry, no. I find that _extremely_ doubtful."

Jacques snagged his drinking glass off the desk again. 

"And as much as I disapproved of my daughter _'_ s choice; it may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise—"

He sighed, swirling the last swig of Vodka that yet remained.

"For if nothing else, having her away from Atlas may ensure she stays _none the wiser_ about what we're doing... And on the homefront I can move a little more _freely_."

The woman on the group call swiftly chided him for a perceived blind spot. "So you're _really_ just going to _let her go_? Jacques, I think you're starting to lose your objectivit—"

" _That being said,_ " Jacques sternly warned, throwing his empty palm off to the side annoyedly.

"Prior to and _upon_ her departure in November, I will take steps to _ensure_ it stays that way. Until then, I will _not_ have any of you intruding on my family life and risking _unwarranted_ exposure."

* * *

**who?**

* * *

"Her departure is a _family_ matter, and I should like it to _remain_ that way."

Jacques glanced back and forth between Slater's last inquiry and the open audio call before him, before pushing up off of his desk and hovering his hand over a button marked "END TRANSMIT". 

"If we have no _further_ business, I believe this meeting can be adjourned. Good night, gentlemen. Ma'am."

He depressed the button, and all six connection routes closed immediately, replaced by the static and the empty frequencies that they filled.

The Schnee patriarch then leaned back in his chair, downing the rest of his drink as he looked out into the Amaranthe District's vast gardens and farms, distant lights flickering in the night like faraway little starry trickles. 

He chuckled softly, relishing the bitter taste on his tongue, then hummed the opening bar of the Mantlean national anthem to himself, bobbing his head from side-to-side with the imagined heavy drums and triumphant fanfare in his mind.

"Für ehre, für vaterland und bestellen..." _For honor, for fatherland and order..._

 _"_ F ür Belastun, für reich, dass wir kämpfen..." _For Mantle, for kingdom, that we fight..._

Nobody played _Vaterland Und Bestellen_ in public anymore—perhaps that was the greatest defeat the other kingdoms had given Mantle. 

Ships can be rebuilt. People can heal and repopulate. Buildings can be restored.

But nothing can really bring back the pride of a wounded nation.

[=▽=]

 **SDC Tower – Executive Elevator  
** **En Route to: Sub-Level 4  
Designation: Tramway Access  
**Jacques leaned against the glass walls of his private elevator as it passed through level after level of office floors, laboratories, storage facilities—each filled with hundreds of personnel, loyally working for him in a monument constructed out of corporate vanity, steel, and glass that well exceeded anything built prior by anyone or anything in Atlas.

Yet, it wasn't what was above the ground that was the most crucial to the company's operations. 

Underneath the tower was a vast complex of support infrastructure, life support, server rooms, and private trams linking the company's various annex towers located throughout the city, with a line even linking directly to Atlas Academy itself.

Jacques' perfectly cleaned ears registered the third beep he'd heard since crossing the threshold past street level, then pushed away from the glass, tugging his suit jacket down and straightening up a little.

All those support systems were on sub-levels one through four. Officially speaking, there was nothing below sub-level four.

He approached the cab's control panel as the car shuddered past the third basement level and descended further towards, withdrawing his company card from his vest pocket. Normally, most areas could be accessed by Scroll ident alone, but some required... _extra_ authorization.

Jacques unceremoniously jabbed the card into the restricted section reader, held it in the slot, then pressed the button on the cerulean panel that _would_ normally send the car into maintenance mode. 

He held the button down, and after a second, the AI controlling the tower chimed in.

"M-A access confirmed, proceeding to sub-level five. Welcome back, Jacques."

[=▽=]

 **SDC Tower – Sublevel 5  
** **Designation: [Missing or Deleted]  
** **Special Access Only  
** Mere greed and personal ambition was something Jacques left behind a long time ago, but the image of a simple executive, that was important to keep cultivated. The lies and twisting false flags the man planted every day was for the greater good. 

At least, that was what he told himself. Jacques Schnee slept perfectly well at night; though he did recall that he tended to sleep easier when he had his wife by his side. No matter what sort of power someone might possess; it never saves oneself from the failings of ... well, oneself.

This transcendant theme extended to the very architecture of this level—the deliberately confusing design was by his order, a strange mirroring of the inscrutable nature of his own mind. The unfinished, industrial layout a drastic departure from the sheen and ivory that permeated the levels above.

The twisting corridors of sublevel five were hard to navigate on the best of days. No maps existed of the top-secret area, and the dim lighting of the industrial space made it tricky for even those who knew its interior intimately to navigate in. 

All by design; for were this facility to ever be exposed, the Schnee patriarch would need as much time as humanly possible to clean up the _mess_. 

A left here, a right there, a u-turn later, and he found himself standing before a simple white door, unlabeled, much like every other door in the facility.

He stepped through into a simple service pod for a much larger project. An undecorated desk lay before him, with a human man sitting at it. Brown-haired, pale-skinned, overall a very nondescript fellow.

And yet the one person Jacques trusted with something like this. For security reasons, the old man never used his real name. Only calling him...

"Technician."

The office the man sat in was a constrained, cramped affair, with little in the way of creature comforts. It wasn't designed for long-term use, anyway—what was beyond the curved glass windows on the far wall were of more interest to both of them.

The boy looked away from the many monitors and status screens before him, mid-bite into a box of some Mistrali take-out.

"Ah, sir."

Jacques waved out with a hand, "And how is our _experiment_ going?"

Tech put the box down on the desk, stuffing a fork into a box of fried noodles that seemed a red coloration; likely something spicier than anything one could get from Vacuo, even. He then swiftly bucked his chair forward, pulling into the console before him.

"Stasis is working well, doesn't seem to be affecting her—"

Jacques cleared his throat and glowered at the man sitting before him.

" _It's_ —" Tech quickly corrected— "cognition or operational readiness."

"And what of the mechanicals?" Jacques inquired coldly.

"Working fine, disconnected from the CPU while it's in deep-freeze, though. Temps required for suspended animation are hard enough to deal with for the wetware implants."

"Good. Pull it up."

The technician seemed to stop midway through tapping a control for a diagnostic, figuring that this was merely a routine call to check in on Jacques' pet project. He didn't even look back at Jacques, but his tone sounded almost _concerned_.

"Sir?"

"We've had it under for long enough, time for Scion to stretch its legs."

Tech said nothing further, and instead tapped a few more buttons. 

On the other side of the glass, a winch kicked into gear, pulling chains taut as a metal box rose out of a pool of half-sludged ice. Streams of melted water and entire clouds of steam arose from the entire pond, masking the complete shape of the coffin-sized object.

The winches groaned to a halt, holding the box over the water as a hatch slid shut over it, slamming into place to cover the watery prison. Then, the box was slowly lowered to the ground.

A deep, mechanical growl erupted out of the speakers in the room almost immediately and a text interface lit up on one of the displays, spitting out simple three-word text messages, though the thing on the other side could more than hear Jacques perfectly.

" **Inquiry — Request — Mission.** "

"I have a job, yes," Jacques nonchalantly replied. "Intel about a facility in Argus has fallen into the hands of a group of interest; a facility with certain secrets we'd prefer to _stay_ that way."

" **Inquiry — Operation — Profile.** "

"Defense only. We need this to stay quiet."

Tech glanced back up at Jacques with a furrowed brow, before quickly turning back and blowing air out the sides of his lips.

The patriarch continued his briefing.

"You'll only be there if the company regulars can't stop them, which is _rather_ likely, given the Fang's combat effectiveness."

" **Acknowledged — Confidence — Absent.** "

There was a brief moment of silence as the text marker on the display halted entirely.

After a moment, the synthesized speech chimed in with, " **Addendum — Absence — Disturbing.** "

The Technician chuckled outwardly, at which Jacques openly ground his teeth and subtly snarled.

"Something _funny_ , Doctor?"

"No sir!" Tech feigned a cough and quieted down quickly. "Nothing funny at all."

The old man turned back to the glass and grumbled softly at his rebellious killing machine. Shame he couldn't purge its mind entirely.

"My lack of confidence in my security forces notwithstanding, your R-O-E is as follows:

"Not to engage until ordered by the facility's director, and keep enemy casualties between forty and seventy-five percent."

" **Inquiry — Operation — Objective.** "

"Psychological warfare, and all those other—" Jacques shook his head— " _delightful_ things."

"Terrify them into fleeing, make a good show of it, and make sure they know the _price_ of interfering in our affairs. In short—"

The patriarch sighed and crossed his arms, almost as if this entire affair was more of a slight inconvenience than anything else to him.

"Get those _mutts_ to stop baring their Fangs at us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make no apologies for the blatant and overdone foreshadowing of this.  
>    
>  This does not alter the Schnee family dynamics significantly, as Jacques is exceptionally careful to not include them in any of this. He also almost never conducts business related to Mantle Ascendant out of his manor for security reasons. It hasn't spilled over into his family life...  
>    
>  At least, not yet.  
>    
>  If it's not completely clear, the scene in the beginning was specifically what was cut from Weiss' chapter and pushed up to here. It took a while to get here, but I feel that scene definitely would not have worked nearly as well there, and it would have taken away from Weiss' story, which was, y'know, the whole point of that chapter.  
>    
>  Writing is just an ... _interesting_ process.  
>    
>  Up next, the White Fang. Specifically, Sienna, Adam, and Ilia's assault on the SDC facility as depicted in the Adam short. But it's not going to quite go according to plan...  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/640574954610507776/commentary-bwf-6-by-the-children-of-hate)


	7. In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning**  
> 
> 
> I'm sorry.

The drone of the bullhead's turbines filled Sienna's lower ears as the craft bolted over the pristine waters of the Atlesian sea. Looking out the side-window behind her seat, she took in the constellation of tiny windows, passenger cars, and various flashing signal lights of the Argii skyline. 

Despite the throne of the White Fang being located within the forests of Mistral on the same continent, she'd only been here a scant few times before, and she never came to appreciate it the same way she loved her remote compound or even the more south villages of mainland Mistral.

It was the way the streets smelled to her. Too clean, too perfect. 

Too _Atlesian_.

"Those snowbacks sure know how to build a city," Sienna snarked. "I'll give 'em that."

"Hate this place myself," Adam said.

Sienna turned to face the horned, redheaded Hitomari man strapped in across from her. In the seats next to both of them were two hooded, masked faunus—one man, and a woman. 

Four-person strike team, good pilot, small, fast radar-dampened airship, insertion point a mile away from the facility. The plan was perfect. 

"Let's run through it one more time," Sienna started.

" _Must_ we?"

The woman next to Adam planted the butt of her rifle on the deck plating. "We might be freedom fighters, but there's a reason we stick to something _resembling_ protocol, Taurus." 

Adam huffed, shrugging his shoulders. 

A bodysuited young girl stepped away from the cockpit, shooting an icy glare at Adam. 

"I'm here, High Leader."

Sienna glanced at the chameleon faunus. "Enjoying the view, Ilia?"

"Not really." Ilia shrugged. "Thank the Brothers we aren't staying long."

"Agreed. So, briefing—"

Sienna exhaled softly.

"Three months ago, Hitoma Adam, working alongside our _errant sister_ and our dearest Ilia here... recovered data from a Schnee Dust Company train en route to Vale from Michem while on a more _routine_ operation."

Adam cleared his throat, leaning over with his palms pressed together and glancing at the others, recalling his fight with the centauroid machine.

"Wasn't just AK-130s we were fighting, either—new, heavier model. Thing took more hits than anything I'd ever seen, had like a—"

Adam shook his head.

"A predator's instinct."

Sienna rolled her palm over, gesturing at her lieutenant. "Which is a _problem_. The Atlesians are rolling out smarter and better killing machines every year.

"With an _army_ of things like that, they can stomp out _any_ attempts by our Mantle Cell at working to free the _Bactasi_ trapped in those horrible conditions up north."

Sienna glanced at Ilia before continuing, who only nodded at her. The high leader turned back to finish her briefing.

"Now, from the intel secured from that train, we learned that a major Dust pipeline for weapons runs through an SDC facility _outside_ of Argus.

"I don't know what the snow-humpers are doing there, and frankly, I don't _care_.

"So we get in, we steal as much as we can carry, then use the everything else we find to blow the facility back to the first era."

The massive dark-skinned bulwark of a man next to Sienna with his arms crossed, who hadn't said a word the entire trip, cracked his lips open and spoke in a harsh baritone, a northern Bactasi accent.

"By the book, pure, simple. Remind you of older, better days, Sienna?" 

The man slapped his thigh and chuckled heartily.

Sienna leaned back, crossing her legs as she gripped her crash harness.

"My time with the _Légion_ wasn't great, but at least I learned a lot."

"Like how to kill humans," Adam snarled. 

Sienna shook her head. "How to _beat_ them at their own _game_."

◁⛋▷

Landing pads were easy enough to take. A little Harpex on their Dust Cells, and every SDC-livery _Condor_ and _Bullhead_ parked there was instantly turned to scrap metal. Ilia's technical skills were on full display, knowing just what reinforced panel to pull off to expose them.

With their combined efforts and three superpowered warriors on their side, the Fang descended on the base like an unyielding wind, scrapping AK-130s effortlessly and mopping the floor with the two human guards posted on the outside.

Before them now as two sloping concrete façades parted by a wide tunnel that led deeper into the earth, where the bulk of the facility laid. White paint on the concrete was cracked and mottled, belying either its age or lack of maintenance.

Set into the middle of the two bulwarks was a heavy steel door on massive rollers, left its unpainted, gleaming polished metal.

A much more freshly white-painted cargo truck with an offset cab was parked in front of the door. A standard Schnee snowflake painted on the side, but instead of the outermost petals, the emblem instead was tipped by a series of radial lightning bolts.

Underneath, was painted the acronym "SFW", each letter separated by a narrow space.

"Schnee Future Weapons," Ilia recalled.

The clever chameleon turned to Sienna. "High Leader, I don't think this is _just_ a Dust shipping center."

Sienna's eyes narrowed. "Objective hasn't changed. Prep for breach."

The female demolitions expert moved forward, preparing a white-painted explosive of Atlesian origin—not Harpex, but something far stronger.

The _Bactasi_ rifleman lowered his light machine gun, shrugging his shoulders.

"Who opens one-foot thick bunker door with explosives? There must be easier way, right?"

"No way _faster_ ," Ilia chided.

The charge swiftly bonded to the steel surface as the rest of the team backed away, taking defensive positions at the tip of the concrete slope. 

The demolitionist glanced back at the rest of the strike team, standing by the charge, before lifting her palm behind where her faunus ear _would_ be, had she not been a tailed tanuki faunus.

Sienna tapped the black dampeners strapped over her feline ears, then checked the muffs covering her more human ones.

Everyone did the same, then a moment later, Sienna nodded to the demolitionist.

She tapped a large button in the middle of the device and a circle of LEDs came to life, counting down. She swiftly retreated, not wanting to get caught in the shaped charge's backblast.

Fifteen seconds later, a blisteringly high-pitched thrum of Dust energy built up, followed by a sudden, violent wave of amethyst energy pounding the thick Hunter-grade steel, then a fiery concentrated blast tore right through the central mechanism of the vault door.

The Bactasi man flattened himself against the right side of the door, shouldering his light machine gun. He flicked a switch and a cerulean defensive barrier flared to life, rippling out to protect his body from any enemy fire.

The others moved in simultaneously to the side of the door with military precision, save Ilia herself.

The chameleon reached into the hole, found the door's main actuator, then yanked firmly, a solid metal clanging signaling the door's release.

The rest of the team slowly opened the door, glancing nervously at the rifleman with the barrel of an LMG angled between the breach.

Nobody needed to say it—they all knew they were running on borrowed time. The snowshod were slow to rise, but when they finally did, whoever woke them would suffer their wrath.

Brothers help you if they brought a Valen Tonne of snowballs into the fray.

◁⛋▷

When the doors finally cracked open, a tersely-speaking, synthetic female voice came over the base's intercom. 

_"Threat Condition Lambda. Executing Contingency: M-A, Delta-Four-One—"_

The voice was suddenly cut off mid-sentence. A siren sounded throughout the facility, and a deeper baritone voice with an Old Mantlean accent replaced the prior feminine-sounding one.

 _"_ **_This facility is now under— administrative— lockdown._ ** _"_

 _"_ ** _Releasing—Scion._ ** _"_

"That's new." Adam sheathed his katana, then turned to Sienna.

The burly Bactasi narrowed his eyes under his mask, his index finger clenching the outside of the rifle's guard tensely. "What is this, 'Scion'? High Leader, do you know?"

The striped tigress snarled outwardly. "Never heard of any Atlesian machine by that name. Must be new." 

She turned to face the rest of group, side-stepping an unconscious guard.

"Eyes and ears on a swivel! Not about to be blindsided by some snow-humper in a tin can or whatever else they've got up their sleeves!"

☾=▽=☽

In another section at the heart of the base, behind hidden doors, concrete and reinforced steel, a metal devil stirred from her slumber in an unlit, black room. On both sides of the room, set into the walls, lights flickered from server banks and inert diagnostic screens.

 _"_[ ** _Releasing—Scion._ ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CoE46ZsD0) _"_

Flourescent lights suddenly buzzed and flickered on, revealing an upright, pure white casket with an inverted tri[ ▽ ](https://i.imgur.com/mM6LthP.png)ngle emblazoned into its front panel.

> _A glaring neon glow illuminates this street..._

Twin doors on the casket furled open, steam rushing and billowing out into the room as what was _left_ of a woman unthawed. 

> _Breathe in these acrid vapors—_

Steel shutters along where her ribcage _should_ have been opened and closed as she 'breathed' in the cold air of the SDC facility's depths.

> _Tin and alchemy..._

They rattled and clanked, the rushing air being filtered for impurities and then fed directly into an artificial heart that sent synthetic white blood into what was left of her organics.

> _Hi-tech cathedrals rose and fell in great ravines..._

When the twin panels on the front of the coffin had swung open to their furthest point, blackened metal claws grasped the sides of the box.

> _Colossal steeples to dead gods and ancient kings..._

Similarly-colored, steel feet clacked out onto the metal floor. Scion pulled the rest of her body out from the misty sarcophagus that had imprisoned her for so long.

> _Broken body, built anew..._

She fell to her knees, a dozen cables stringing off of her chassis, chaining her to her metal tomb. Her blackened hands hit the cold steel of the floor, metal clanging against metal. 

> _Spirit lingers, slivers grew..._

Her eyes were an unnaturally stark crimson, with digitally-engraved irises that twisted and rotated like a camera lens; framed on both sides by her blunt bangs, running up to meet long, artificial hair that flowed behind her with every movement.

> _Iron fingers grip my heart, so cold..._

Though her form was artificial, it was definitely shaped to something resembling the feminine ideal, complete with a slender mechanical waist, and a gyroscopically-balanced set of alloy hips.

> _Dust-soaked hands to misery..._

She rose to her feet, moving her hands behind her back, yanking out a dozen cables and tubes jabbed into her chassis into various ports and sockets running up her spine. 

> _Political duplicity..._

When she reached the final cable embedded in a port at the base of her skull, she grimaced, depressed its release, and then slowly pulled a long, thin metal rod out from the port. 

> _Barest skin, a commodity long sold..._

A visceral squelching accompanied its withdrawal, and the woman grunted softly when the tip finally pulled out.

> _Slave to the new black gold—_

The port slammed an iris-shaped shutter closed. Scion raised her hand, looking at the blood-splattered rod with disdain, before tossing it aside unceremoniously.

> _There's a heartbeat under my skin..._

Her eyes lit up, LEDs behind pyrex lenses making her optics glow a brighter red. Electrical humming resonated from within her upper chassis.

> _Search my electric soul—_

Conduits running over her limbs flared a bright yellow as a shimmering field of Dust energy enveloped her entire body. 

> _For the woman hid within..._

A moment later, the woman vanished. As one does, when you're a scary assassin seemingly put into the world solely to make certain individuals suffer horribly. 

◁⛋▷

Ilia nodded at Adam, looking over her Scroll.

"Try it now."

The great bulwark of a man heaved the sliding door to the side, revealing a perfectly-lit, vast space with dozens, if not hundreds of machines mounted to racks. Black paint, sleek exteriors. 

Notably lacking the expressive LED faces that the more brightly-colored counterparts defending the facility had. 

Ilia's eyes widened at the scene, and everyone present—from the lady demolitionist to the Khan herself—tightened their grips on their weapons. 

Yet the black carapaces hanging before them didn't flicker on or even twitch.

"Might just be playing dead," Adam hummed pensively, before stepping into the warehouse.

Separated into two groups, a row running down the middle, together there must have been a hundred of them there.

"Creepy..." Ilia's gaze swept over the lake of iron men standing still and silent before her.

"These aren't AK-200s. Look more like a variant of those, ahm, new ones."

Adam rolled his eyes at Ilia. "You can gawk at their tech _another_ time, Amitola."

"No, no. Look."

Ilia stopped before one of the machines, waving the other leaders over. She pointed at a gently thrumming shoulder piece, pulsing a vibrant cerulean behind a few rows of shutters. 

"These have shield generators. And—"

Ilia turned around, pointing to a member of the other group of Black Knights.

"And these have— 

"Well, I can't say _what_ it is, but it's glowing a different color."

_Yellow._

Adam cocked his head at the other one's shoulder.

"Light Dust?"

Ilia compressed her hands over her face, suppressing an elated squeak. A moment later, she pulled her hands away and voiced her nerdgasmic conclusion as calmly as the dorky chameleon faunus could.

"Stealth tech? No, no—"

"Hmm."

Everyone turned to the Bactasi, and he anxiously glanced between them before clarifying.

"No, is just. I heard about thing like this. Some Atlas think tank, they designed some sort of... light-bending _thing_. Can hide much. Last I heard, was prototype, then... Suddenly, nothing."

"Cover up, I'm sure." Ilia shrugged. "Quick classification, then they can use it in secret shit like this."

The Khan sighed outwardly, rubbing her palm on her head. 

"Icemen keep pumping out new killing machines like they're hooked on the feeling. Alright—"

She lowered her hand, then addressed the group, gesturing to a heavy set of reinforced doors on the other side of the hall.

"Dust room's through there, let's _move_."

◁⛋▷

Sienna hissed through her fangs as her eyes darted between the racks of Black Knights before them.

" _Ilia_..." 

"Almost got it," The tech-savvy renegade flatly replied. "If I don't do this right, we all get blown straight to the Animal God."

She shook her head as her hands went back to digging around inside the thrumming patchwork of conduit within the panel.

"Dust conduits are a _blya cyka_ to deal with under the best of conditions."

Her eyes narrows, darting between the various glowing pipes within the alcove. Finally, she reached in with a screwdriver and gently loosened a single bracket, before clawing her fingers around a pipe and yanking it just slightly out of place.

The response was immediate. Sienna heard the massive bulkhead thud before them, but energy from the disconnected Dust conduit surged back outwards into Ilia, causing her to yank her arm back and softly whine in pain.

" _Pizdet,_ " the bulwark of a man with the LMG cursed. "You alright there, Ilia?"

The techie shoved one of her singed knuckles into her mouth, instinctively nursing the small burn as she came to her feet.

"Yeah, no. I'm good. Try it now."

The man nodded then tried to hand his rifle off to Adam, who just shook his head.

"Fine, I will lay it on floor and just be defenseless while I open this jar of pickles, _da_?"

Sienna rolled her eyes. "Just help me get the door open, Peter."

The tigress stepped forward and hooked her claws around one side of the door while the Bactasi man grabbed the other. Adam leveled his rifle at the narrow gap.

The two heaved, yanking the doors open only to reveal... 

Nothing.

"Ilia—" Sienna let go of the door— "Did you draw power from the _lights_?"

Ilia just awkwardly scratched the back of her head and chuckled. "Just the mains, backups should kick on on a sec, if the snow-humpers set up their ballasts right."

Sienna sighed as the first triad of lights that was closest to them turned on, with the exception of one that stubbornly stayed unlit.

As the team stepped through into the room, that same pattern repeated itself with the rest. Some lights would glimmer and thrum to life, others stubbornly stayed off, still others flickered irregularly or dimly.

Adam chuckled, shaking his head. "You'd think the biggest Dust company in the world would be able to spring for better lighting."

"I'm _guessing_ keeping an underused storeroom's emergency lighting working right is a little lower on their priority list than making sure this stuff keeps _moving_ ," Sienna snarked in response.

Adam shrugged back. " _Still_."

On the shelves they could see were dozens of ivory flatpacks of Dust, set atop crates filled with the same. Each one marked with the standard Schnee snowflake emblem, unlike the truck outside.

"Alright, everyone, you know the drill. Start grabbing cases. Fire Dust is our main priority—I want two flatpacks at least.

"You see any cases of synth, grab them instead."

The other four started stepping through the space, glancing down aisles and picking over crates.

"And make sure we don't get any of those stupid combo platters!" Sienna shouted as the rest of the team disseminated through the unevenly lit space. "We want _bulk packs_!"

◁⛋▷

The room was oddly quiet. Sienna's ears were unused to such eerie silence, so the noble rebel leader angled them around to listen in on her team while she did much the same as they were, navigating the winding warehouse and helping herself to the snow-shod's wares.

As her palm drifted over the surface of a flatpack stamped with 'Fire Dust, Refined Crystal, 10ct', her ears picked up Ilia's voice to her far left, on the other side of the warehouse.

" _V tihom omute cherti vodyatsa..._ "

Her native Bactasi, but her voice wavered a little. She was anxious.

"What?" Adam replied in Zhong.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ilia translated.

"It'll be fine, Amitola." Sienna could hear Adam sighing. "Let's just get this done."

As if it the universe was responding to Adam's challenge, Sienna heard an electrical thrum coming from across the warehouse where she'd sent Peter, the heavy gunner to.

Her slit eyes widened as the inevitable gunfire and screaming hit her ears.

Like a den mother to the defense of her kits, Sienna mounted the crate she was palming a moment before, leaping over the towering shelves and landing near the noise on all fours, before rising to her feet, snarling outwardly.

Adam himself had made it to the same hall, beholding the grim sight.

The details only floated over her mind, the main thing that registered was Peter's mask having been knocked off his head, and him reaching out to his leader for help, gasping as his body failed him.

He'd stopped moving a moment earlier.

"Peter..." 

Sienna moved to approach, only to be stopped by Adam's arm. Though she could easily move aside, she simply snarled at the impudence, the _gall_ —

" _Hitoma_ Adam—"

"Look at his _ribcage_. Like he was torn into by a Grimm."

Adam turned to Sienna, glowering through his cowardly mask.

"High Leader... He's _already_ dead."

"Shit... I guess, fuck." 

Sienna turned back to the fellow soldier, then turned to Adam.

"Tactical retreat."

" _What?_ " Adam shook his head in confusion. "High Leader, we can still—"

Sienna paced back into the center aisle, walking with heretofore unseen purpose. 

"I've known Peter for years. His Aura strength is _fifteen_ , Adam! Fifteen!"

Underneath his mask, Adam's good eye widened slightly, then narrowed as he bolted off behind the High Leader, drawing _Wilt_ and swiftly unhooking _Blush_ from his belt.

◁⛋▷

Ilia had immediately dropped what she was doing as soon as she'd heard the gunfire on the other side of the warehouse. She swiftly drew her whip and brandished it close to her center of mass as she made a hasty path back to the door.

_"In the corner of your eye..."_

Ilia turned to face the source of the voice, but only saw a faint shimmer darting behind a crate.

_"A sight you can hardly see..."_

It wasn't quite like any voice she'd heard before. A low, guttural contralto speaking Zhong with a synthetic snarl underneath it—a woman. A woman that was so close, it almost felt like she were right next to her, hissing in her ear. 

Ilia's eyes darted around the space as her skin took on a black stealthy pallor, falling to the shadows herself.

"Who are you?"

A deep, menacing chuckle echoed between the shelves, from faint shimmers in the corner of her eye that were gone just as fast.

_"Ilia Amitola."_

In the shadows, Ilia reached into her pocket and withdrew something that not even she could see, but she could feel it. A round, disc-shaped object. 

She rubbed her thumb on it idly, contemplating the voice.

"Are you Scion?"

_"Indeed I am."_

Two questions hit Ilia's increasingly adrenaline-soaked mind.

"Why are you talking to me? How do you know my _name_?"

Again, the corner of Ilia's eyes caught the edge of a faint shimmer to her left, but one that swiftly darted out of sight the moment Ilia turned.

_"I'm afraid you won't get the chance to see Blake again..."_

Ilia's eyes narrowed, taking on a red hue as her heart began to race.

"How do you—"

◁⛋▷

A sudden electrical whine erupted from behind her, and Ilia turned to face her assured assailant, raising her whip in turn. 

The cyborg woman came forward like a storm of cerulean and black, slashing with dual Hard Light Blades that sparked and thrummed unstably, setting Ilia on the defensive instantly as she reflexively dashed backwards as elegantly as she could.

She parried and countered every slash as she scrambled back, hopping over crates and warehouse shelves to put distance between the close ranged fighter and herself.

Unexpectedly, the woman raised her boot, hitting Ilia's chest with the force of a bucking bronco. The sensation of enervation hit the faunus' mind, a feeling of a railroad tie being smashed into her chest, and then numbness.

She soared across the room, colliding with the wall on the other side as flecks of lavender darted out of her vision almost instantly. She groaned and grunted, feeling the numbness and exhaustion take her.

Her Aura was gone.

The cyborg whirred and clattered closer, stomping forward with the determined gait of a predator, but slow and plodding. Ilia took the moment to take stock of her soon-to-be-killer.

A broad build, with an entirely black carapace beneath the neck. Red, glowing eyes. 

_A machine._

Ilia grunted, seemingly in pain as a metallic clang was heard coming from the hand clasped around the disc she'd pulled from her pocket a moment before.

She wasn't about to go into the black so quietly. 

Like she'd done a thousand times before, her whip swiftly wrapped around the cyborg's leg, sending current surging into her as Ilia yanked backwards into the wall with all the strength her battered Aura could muster, banging her elbow into the concrete and sending the nerves in her arm afire in rebellion.

The metal woman was heavy, but she quickly was knocked off-balance, clanking onto the concrete floor and growling most _in_ elegantly, but seemingly entirely unaffected by the lightning coursing through her.

She merely sat up, looking to the errant restraint as a cerulean field comprised of hexagons flickered and flared in and out of existence around her leg, grounding the discharge away from her components.

Scion glanced back at the chameleon faunus, then cocked an eyebrow, flashing an impressed smirk. She then flailed her foot around, almost nonchalantly shedding the coiled whip.

A moment later, an electrical hum rose from her body and the woman shimmered out of sight.

Ilia quickly stood up, retracting her whip back into itself. She then grimaced and whined softly, her skin turning blue as she withdrew the round disc from her other hand. 

The faunus examined the device. It was a sloped gadget with her personal symbol embedded into it, and a single, thin steel needle poking out of it, partially soaked in fleks of red.

Hearing the rest of her team catching up, she shuffled the gadget back into its hiding spot.

When she let her hand drift back down to her side, blood dripped onto the concrete below, catching Sienna's attention.

"Ilia, you're bleeding!"

"It's fine, I'll wrap it in the ship!" 

"Are you hurt? Did you see what—"  
  
Ilia clamped her bloodied fist tighter as she ran with the other three.

"Later! Vot eto **piz** dets!" _This is_ **_bull_** _shit!_

The lady demolitionist paused briefly close to the entrance, yanking a tiny egg-shaped capsule out of her pocket, before slapping her hand onto a nearby crate of Dust in one practiced motion. Mechanical whirring sounded as the limpet mine swiftly clamped onto the wooden surface, followed by a drilling noise as she followed the other two out.

Mission might have been cancelled on account of evil bitch alert, but at least the Atlesians wouldn't get to use the Dust here either.

◁⛋▷

The deafening thunder hitting their chests from the explosion made Sienna grateful for her dampeners. White-hot fire had surged out from the warehouse, presumably turning their cybernetic adversary to slag.

Her team took a loss, but the rest would live to mourn. In this, she took some grimm comfort.

Though much of the surrounding facility was left unharmed, a massive shipment of Dust had been annihilated before it could be put into proper storage containers.

This was a victory for the White Fang.

The group paused for a moment, contemplating their surroundings as they caught their breath. The sun was starting to rise over the Atlesian Sea to the east, rays of warm light hitting Sienna's face as her irises instinctively contracted. 

Ilia sputtered and coughed, bending over as she ejected the rogue soot that ended up entering her lungs. After a long while spent like this, she spoke up first.

"What— the _hell_ was that thing?!"

"I don't know," the demolitionist replied. "But it's dead now. We're safe." 

As if the universe itself had a sense of ironic timing, a high-pitched electrical whine sounded through the formerly quiet forest.

The trained eyes of each warrior present darted between the dimly lit foliage surrounding them. Sienna's ears twitched and waved, trying to localize the noise as she drew her _Cerberus Whip_.

"Everyone. To the ship, _now_." 

The order wasn't questioned. All four survivors backed up, forming a defensive semi-circle as they retreated, weapons drawn. 

The demolitionist, rifle in hand, crept backwards next to Adam. Sienna gently waved her whip by her side, tensed up and ready for an attack.

Ilia's bloody hand gripped her own weapon in a neutral defensive stance. Held outwards, ready to parry.

That's when everyone heard it. A rustling to the left, near the demolitions expert. They all looked, but their adversary struck from the other side.

Like a pair of floating candles, two cerulean, crackling blades struck at Ilia's upper back, slashing faster than anyone except a master swordsman could counter. Scion hooked one of her blades across Ilia's neck— 

"Ilia!" 

Ilia's slowly dying form gargled and clawed at her neck as her vitality soddened the earthen ground with its stark crimson. A moment later, she'd stopped moving.

Without even a heartbeat of hesitation, all three that remained opened fire on the invisible adversary, but their bullets only hit metallic plating with deafening ricochets and clanking as she deactivated her blades.

The demolitionist and Adam stopped firing a moment later, their rifles now only making sawdust out of a nearby tree's bark. 

"Where'd she go?!" Adam snarled. "How do you fight something you can't see?!" 

The familiar thrumming sound hit their ears again, this time behind them. 

Hard Light blades pierced their way into the demolitionist's back, twin cerulean triangles jutting through her weak Aura being the only hint as to her attacker's location. 

Scion turned, dragging the dying body of their ally, putting the faunus between her metal carapace and her two allies.

She choked and gasped as she was hefted off her feet with the blue swords, before the spears swiftly disappeared, and Scion threw the woman's dying body unceremoniously against a tree, where she slumped pathetically against it, hyperventilating as her pierced lungs failed her.

Scion decloaked and a faint blue shimmer appeared around her body for a brief moment. 

"Casualties, sixty percent."

"Advise retreat." She turned to Adam and Sienna, who were glowering at her, both snarling. "I will not engage."

"To hell with that—" Adam started, only to be cut off by the cyborg's monotonous words.

"Hitoma Adam. White Fang Lieutenant." 

She glanced at Sienna. "Oki Sienna. Khan, Clan Oki. Suspected White Fang ' _High Leader_ '." 

The words seemed to drip from her lips with disdain rather than respect. 

"You know us, I take it." Sienna's weapon didn't lower, nor did her enraged stare.

Scion nodded. "Action sanctioned. Cause: Interference with Atlesian affairs. Sabotage. Theft." 

"All to fight _your_ kind," Adam steadfastly declared as he rippled his fingers across his katana's hilt.

"So after that show of _strength_ , I find it hard to believe you're really just going to let us go, machine."

"Casualties sixty percent," Scion repeated. "More deaths would raise it beyond mission parameters." 

"Advise retreat—" Scion shook her head— "I will _not_ engage."

"And what if _we_ decide to engage and _avenge our friends_?" 

"Then this unit is permitted to engage in self-defense." 

Sienna retracted her whip, snarling as she wringed her wrist out. Sensing her lieutenant's simmering hatred, she laid a hand on his arm, narrowing her felinid eyes at him.

"Live to mourn, Hitoma Adam." 

Adam growled softly, staring the cybernetic woman down. A moment later, he sighed, lifting Sienna's hand away.

"And mourn we shall." He sheathed his katana. " _Nidoto_."

Adam spat the blood-soaked earth in front of Scion, then turned around making his way back to the stolen bullhead.

Sienna turned as well, but paused, as if she were testing their newfound enemy's promise. When no footsteps or electrical whines came, she turned back, firing one final glare at the cyborg.

" _Ini belum sele_ ** _sai_** _._ "

With that, she too spat the earth in front of the cyborg, then turned, following her lieutenant.

"Indeed, Miss Oki," Scion replied in a more emotive tone.

"We'll be seeing each other again soon enough."

* * *

_As if the universe was made of pure shitposting, Sienna heard the build-up of hardcore rap music coming from across the warehouse where she'd sent Peter, the heavy gunner to._

_ "It's what you hearin' (Listen)" _

_ "It's what you hearin' (Listen)" _

_ "It's what you hearin' (Listen)" _

◁⛋▷

**_"X GON GIVE IT TO YA"_ **

_Unexpectedly, the woman raised her boot, hitting Ilia's chest with the force of a bucking bronco. The sensation of enervation hit the faunus' mind, a feeling of a railroad tie being smashed into her chest, and then numbness._

**_"FUCK WAITIN FOR YA TO GET IT ON YOUR OWN"_ **

_She soared across the room, colliding with the wall on the other side as flecks of lavender darted out of her vision almost instantly. She groaned and grunted, feeling the numbness and exhaustion take her.  
_

**_"X GON DELIVER TO YA"_ **

_Her Aura was gone._

_**"KNOCK KNOCK, OPEN UP THE DOOR, IT'S REAL—"** _

_The cyborg's theme music, along with her inched closer, stomping forward with the determined gait of a predator, but slow and plodding. Ilia's ears ringed with the heavy wub-wubs entering them._

**_"THE NON-STOP POP-POP OF STAINLESS STEEL—"_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay with me. Notice I haven't added "major character death" up there.  
>    
>  Up next, a reveal I've been waiting a long time for, and the _most important_ part of this AU.  
>    
>  There truly is nothing up the wizard's sleeves, but that's because the trick was already done.  
>    
>  [I hope you're paying attention.](https://www.google.com/search?q=psalm+18:11)  
>    
>  Main reason this chapter took so long is simply how many moving parts there were, how many characters and concepts needed to be addressed. Similarly, my author's commentary is also fairly _lengthy_.  
>    
>  Don't wanna jinx it, but by comparison the next chapter is more straightforward and _might_ take less time.  
>    
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/644297807500591104/commentary-bwf-7-in-the-dark)


	8. Out of the Shadows

_From broken worlds to crimson hope in ivory clad._

_Under blackened skies, set ablaze by the children of hate._

_In the dark, out of the shadows._

* * *

> 
>     [SP-INT5] CONNECT: SP-NYX0
>     [SP-NYX0] SYN-ACK
>     [SP-INT5] WARN: BEACON FREQUENCY DETECTED
>     [SP-INT5] #SH6719B
>     [SP-NYX0] BEACON IDENT: AMITOLA, ILIA
>     [SP-NYX0] DESIGNATION: REVENANT
>     [SP-NYX0] IMMEDIATE RECOVERY REQUIRED
>     [SP-NYX0] REQ: LOC-TIME
>     [SP-INT5] [+62.16, +54.72] @ 07:11
>     [SP-NYX0] RCVD
>     [SP-NYX0] RELAYING TO NW-690AD @ [+60.16, +52.72]
>     [SP-NYX0] UPDATING FLIGHT PLAN

◁???▷

**20 Minutes Later  
** Over the rolling, frigid waters of the North Middle Sea, tumultuous cloud cover rumbled and flashed with the growing pains of a bitter Argusian storm. A lone Nevermore, wings of black ichor, broke past the turmoil, piercing its way through the edge of the rolling cloud bank, dragging vapor streams with it.

Making a straight shot for the coast, this creature seemed to fly with a purpose normally unseen by its species. Though its wings flapped and it occasionally sent out a harrowing call into the early morning air, its flight path was perfectly straight, none of the subtle dips and motions that one would expect from the rise and fall of its wingbeats.

Its form shimmered, giving the briefest glimpse of the beast's true form. A metal twin-engined airship, shaped like a dart—its hull painted in a livery of deep black and had accents hewn out of silvery, polished steel. Ornate floral engravings decorated the vessel's silver plating, making it seem less like a practical craft of war, and more like a flying flower vase.

Yet the forward section was plainly decorated, a more militarized, sharply angled assembly with exposed, unpolished plating, also painted a stealthy black.

On both sides of the unfinished-looking bow was the name _Corvus_ , with a registration number further to the back standing out on the blued steel, painted in white. 

690-AD.

The vessel slowed itself further, its engine cowls emitting less and less of its vibrant white flare that could only be generated by a very lean mix of Combustion Dust. The thrumming of its engines then shimmered and fell silent, as the craft blended into the orange sky surrounding it.

◁???▷

The craft invisibly moved to the location that the Fang had just departed. Purposeful, and quiet. A faint shimmer in the corner of one's eye being the only proof of its presence, darting away at subsonic speeds just as quickly.

Coming to the same clearing those freedom fighters had just departed in a stolen manta, the craft suddenly shimmered back into existence.

Its pointed form suddenly split into two, curved engine pods jutting outwards on struts as the central cockpit revealed itself. In this new configuration, the craft resembled the claw of a South Mistrali Crab, splayed outwards and primed to grasp its prey.

Brush and cover waved and shifted as gravity lifts embedded into the craft's more spread-out engine pods came online, ensuring a slow and steady descent.

It deployed a precarious, insectoid-looking triad of landing struts which softly shoved the earth aside as they bore the frigate's weight. The craft laid there for the briefest of moments, still and calm, the only sound present the slow winding down of its engines, but that was interrupted by metallic clattering and the distinct groaning of hydraulics.

A landing ramp swiftly lowered itself on struts, embedding itself slowly into the earth. A figure could be seen at the top of the ramp, standing stoically.

Clad in heavy, steel armor, with the emblem of a raven clasping the edge of an upended crescent moon. Purple accents on the person's shoulders as symbol of their rank. The individual made their way down the ramp, their metal boots banging loudly and unstealthily with each step, with hissing and whirring accompanying each motion.

Yet, this was no mechanical monster as the cyborg who'd killed the person they were here to save was—no, for in fleeting flares of light that hit the person's darkened visor, a very human, feminine face could be seen held within, one that breathed and bled and felt still.

The woman's helmet turned and swept across the killing field left behind by the monster. Real blood soaked the ground, but no bodies were present. Instead, lined up in a neat row, were three upturned mounds of freshly-upheaved dirt.

Was this the girl's friends doing? Or did her killers have a conscience?

The silver raven shook her head, discarding the thought. Raising her arm to her face, she tapped a few buttons on a display, making her field of vision come to life with patterns and lines, millimeter scans from underneath the forest floor.

The bodies were in a shallow grave, mercifully. 

She stepped forward, approaching the last grave in the line, before tapping a few more buttons and putting her metal arms behind her back.

There was a moment of eerie quiet in the forest, all that could be heard was the woman's labored breathing through the mask.

The earth before her moved and shuddered, layers of the dirt subtly shifting before a red-tinted hand broke past the surface, swiftly followed by a very annoyed-looking Ilia, lifting herself out of the earth gasping for air. 

The girl coughed and sputtered, straining her way out of her grave like a revenant as the Raven looked on.

"Miss Amitola, I presume?"

◁???▷

Ilia spat out a small clump of dirt that had stuck itself to her teeth, then sighed, lowering her head.

"My beacon activated, didn't it?"

"I'm afraid so."

Ilia was quiet for a moment, pursing her lips, before falling backwards onto the edge of her grave in despondency.

"I still had Aura left, why did it kick in?"

"It sensed a threat and reacted accordingly," the Raven replied.

"Then if you're here—" Ilia lifted herself back up— "Then that means the price—"

"Normally yes."

"Alright."

Ilia pursed her lips, looking off towards the wrecked facility sadly, before looking back at the woman and starting to push herself off the earth.

"I'm ready—" 

A heavy gauntlet grabbed her shoulder, stopping her from moving any further. Ilia's eyes turned up at the warrior as her skin shifted subtly, changing from a reddish hue to a more natural skin tone. 

"Huh?" Ilia inquired, cocking an eyebrow.

"I did say _normally_." 

The Raven pulled her arm away, then stepped back a few paces.

"You're going back to the Fang, Ilia. The great plan needs you there a while longer."

Ilia pulled away, crossing her arms. "How are you going to cover for the _High Leader_ seeing me die?"

"We're _not_."

"Oh." 

A heartbeat later, Ilia's eyes parted even wider as the implication hit her.

" _Oh._ "

"Quite."

The Raven lifted her arm, gesturing to the south, where she'd come from.

"My ship is nearby, we'll be heading to your—"

The woman paused, lowering her arm. 

"Ahm, what do you call your headquarters, again?"

"The Enclave," Ilia answered. "Enclave of the Fang."

"And I thought my people had an addiction to the melodramatic," the Raven deadpanned.

"Well, come along now, Bactki Ilia." The woman turned, starting to walk towards her ship. "Time to bring you back from the dead."

Ilia trailed her eyes to the two graves beside her. She laid a palm on the closest mound of dirt, closing her eyes sadly.

"Who took the time to bury us?"

The Raven stopped in her tracks, turning her head to the side. "How large was your strike team?"

"Five."

"And only three mounds. So... Survivors?"

"Maybe..."

She trailed off as she choked softly.

The old man that died today meant a lot more to her than words could really describe. Her parents did the best they could, but when things went bad, and she had to flee Atlas, he helped her.

Even got her in touch with the Fang, which was, of course, when she met Blake. 

It was no small stretch of her memories to say that Bactki Pyotr saved her life.

The paladin spoke again.

"Be grateful when you meet your people again—not all of us are so lucky."

The Raven turned back towards her ship, shaking her head. "When it was my turn, I threw myself off a _cliff_."

Ilia pulled her hand back, then glanced at the soldier. "Wait, I—"

The woman stopped mid-stride, shrugging her shoulders. "Yes?"

"Can you help me with their bodies? I'd... I'd like to at least see them back to the Enclave. I'm sure the Khan, she—"

Wordlessly, the armored woman turned around. She nodded softly, then spoke again.

"I'll head to the ship and retrieve some bodybags from storage. We'll get them home."

"And I don't mean to sound so callous. It's just been—" The Raven lifted up a glove, wiping off her visor— "a rather long deployment. I'm truly sorry for your loss, Miss Amitola."

"Bactki Ilia, please." Ilia stood up, dusting her capris off. "I never use the name I took around humans anymore."

"Very well. Though I must say, had the plan demanded you to join us, you would, for all _practical_ purposes, have to forfeit both names. At least, until the Invocation."

Ilia looked up, narrowing her eyes at the woman as her skin switched into a subtle crimson, her voice taking on a colder tone.

"Don't you have bags to get?"

"So I do. Apologies."

The Raven bowed, then backed away from the mourning faunus. 

◁???▷

Sienna stepped out into the throneroom once more, looking to the door longingly. In her mind, she pictured her lost friends bursting through the portal, claiming their miraculous survival and boasting about a great story to tell.

Even Adam walking back in, with news of their survival, might have been a little welcome.

Sienna's amber eyes turned down.

This was war; they were all just casualties. Dead was dead, and the dead _stayed_ dead. As high leader, she tried to tell herself that sacrifice was necessary for the cause. 

Never made it any easier.

"When true hearts lie wither'd—"

Sienna's ears flattened as she spun around, facing the direction the voice came from.

"And fond ones are flown—"

The source of the femining, filtered-sounding voice was a heavy individual clad in polished, gleaming armor, with purple accents on her chest and shoulders. Engraved into her breastplate was the image of a Raven clasping an upwards-pointing crescent, as if carrying it all on its own.

To her left was Ilia, alive and well. Her skin pink and warm as the moment Sienna had lost her.

"Then who would be left to inhabit this bleak world alone?" The woman concluded.

Sienna sidestepped, coming to the other side of the long carpet, matching her eyes with a very sad-looking Ilia.

Apart from a bandage wrapped around her hand, she didn't even look _scratched_.

"I watched you _die_ ," Sienna snarled. "Your throat cut by a... mechanical monster."

"I— I know, High Leader." Ilia unsubtly moved her bandaged hand behind her back. "Thing about that, is, ahm—"

Ilia trailed off, muttering. " _Kakya govoryu—_ "

The Raven gestured to Ilia with an open, black-gloved palm. "Ilia here had, ah, _friends in low places_ , so to speak."

"And _you—_ " Sienna's voice lowered as she glared into the visor of the power armored woman.

" _You're in my chair._ "

The woman's helmet cocked subtly to the left, but she was otherwise silent. Sienna turned back to Ilia, a stern fire in her eyes. 

"Please tell me you haven't betrayed your brothers and sisters to save your own—"

"I wouldn't!" Ilia yelled. "I would _never_ , High Leader, please. Just... Just hear this person out."

"She may have saved you all by putting your encounter on our _radar_ , as it were," the armored woman explained.

"And as for this little thing..." The Raven ran her hands along the ornate arms of the Fang's throne. "It won't _be_ yours for much longer."

"Is that a _threat_ , Vacuan?" 

"Accent give me away?"

"It's _atrocious_ ," Sienna affirmed.

"Fair. And sadly, it's not a _threat_. More of a certainty. But what do you Mistrali say?"

The woman leaned back subtly, as if in thought.

In the brief moment's hesitation, the High Leader swiftly spun, throwing out her _Cerberus Whip_ at the potential adversary, which stopped just short of the woman's plating, a cerulean field of Hard Light deflecting the attack.

The woman calmly leaned forward as the ends of the whip clattered to the floor.

" _A fall into a ditch only makes you wiser._ "

Sienna yanked the whip back. "A pithy quote, uttered by pithier human _fools_." 

The woman stood up silently and started slowly approaching Sienna. 

"Wisdom comes from many sources. The _real_ fool would ignore it." 

The crusader tapped the middle of her helmeted forehead. "I'd think you know a thing or two about wisdom, _Okiohi_."

"Gem give _me_ away?"

The woman chuckled. "The tattoos, actually. Plus, no other clan has the title of _Khan_. Really embracing your proud marauder heritage, hm?"

"Among other things," Sienna stated flatly.

The Raven stopped a few steps short of Sienna respectfully. "What if I told you that I could make you wiser, _without_ having to fall into a ditch?"

"Then I _might_ almost forgive you for having the gall to sit in my throne."

Sienna put her hand on her hip, angling her head towards Ilia, who was still standing next to the now-vacant chair. 

"You did _mention_ that was something that would be quick to offend me?"

Ilia nodded. "She— the Raven said she felt it would make an... interesting first impression."

"And, well—" The crusader turned subtly to the side, angling herself to look at both faunus women— "The people I work for _encourage_ impressive entrances."

Sienna snarled softly, looking away from the pair, then looked back, settling into her most diplomatic voice. "Do you have something _credible_ for me? About that thing we found in Argus? Or that Atlesian our people found on the train?"

The Silver Raven was only quiet for a moment. She turned her helmet down and pivoted, taking a few paces back to Sienna's throne.

"Khan, what do you know of monsters?"

"Evading my questions is a surefire way to get yourself ejected from this Enclave—"

The titan waved a hand off to the side dismissively, turning back around.

"The answer to _both_ of your questions is in that one. Fang's made out to be monsters, but you're not. You make humans out to be the real monsters, but they're not."

"Not all of them, at least," she added.

Sienna crossed her arms. "Did you _really_ come all this way to debate _philosophy_ with me, tinsuit?"

"No, of course not. I'm here to show you what _I_ can do for _you._ "

A moment's quiet passed. The Raven looked down, then glanced back towards the tigress.

" _Memento Mori_ , Khan. Know what that means?"

"Something about the symbolism of death. Laconic saying." Sienna shrugged her shoulders, keeping her arms crossed. "Dead language used by an even deader cult."

The Raven chuckled oddly menacingly, leaning forward towards Sienna, who bared her fangs in response to the percieved threat.

" _Neither_ are as dead as you think."

The Raven cleared her throat, then stepped back a few paces, stretching her arms out to her sides.

"Khan Sienna, I invite you to listen.

"Let me regale you with the sordid tale of a future that my people have been fighting for centuries to undo."

She lifted her gloves towards the underside of her helmet, clasping at its release.

"Then, let me tell you about the man that will betray you."

* * *

_"You'll be killed by a shadow. A shadow in the form of Stannis Baratheon."_

_Sienna melodramatically turned around, her voice turning low as she snarled angrily._

_"_ **...Stannis...** _"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't _actually_ gonna kill off Ilia—I'm evil, but I'm not _that_ evil. She might have a little bit of survivor's guilt, though.  
>   
> There's more to that scene at the end, and we'll be revisiting this time period a little later in a flashback, but the prologue chapters as they are have ran on long enough already. The reason this one was a little short is because it's intended to be an epilogue, of sorts, for the last chapter, and there's more to be revealed.  
>   
> The last scene takes place after the events of the Adam short, when Adam himself is sent to Vale, setting up the events of Volume 1.  
>   
> Next chapter we're hitting the ground running in Vale with Ruby and the events of Episode 1, along with our re-introduction to Ozpin. As per usual, a lot of things will be familiar, but some things have changed in subtle ways.  
>   
> Or simply have been expanded on.  
> 
> 
> [Author's Commentary](https://wolfprincesssarah.tumblr.com/post/644952539788410880/commentary-bwf-8-out-of-the-shadows)


End file.
